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Signs of Promise. 



SERMONS 

PREACHED IN PLYMOUTH PULPIT, BROOKLYN, 

1887-9. 



BY yT 

LYMAN ^BOTT. 



7^' 



PRINTED FROM STENOGRAPHIC REPORTS. 




NEW YORK : 
FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT. 

1889. 







Copyright, 1889, by 
Fords, Howard, & Hulbert. 



9 



PREFACE. 



This volume contains eighteen sermons which, 
during the two years of my ministry in Plymouth 
Church, have been from time to time specially re- 
quested for publication, either by the officers of 
tbe church or by members of the congregation. If 
there is any reason for their publication, it lies in 
the fact that they have been helpful to some hearers 
who have believed that they might be helpful to 
others in the reading. They are printed as de- 
livered; they were not written, but were taken 
down stenographically and subsequently revised by 
myself for publication. They have therefore the 
characteristics of extempore address. These char- 
acteristics I have neither attempted to remove nor 
to conceal. 

There is no visible and apparent connection be- 
tween these sermons. They were not preached as a 
series. Each sermon grew out of some supposed need 
in the church or congregation and was addressed 
thereto, with no thought of subsequent publication. 
Yet the reader may perhaps discern a certain unin- 
tended connection, such as may serve to give a kind 

3 



4 PREFACE, 

of unity to the volume. The first two sermons are in 
the nature of personal tributes to my predecessor in 
Plymouth Pulpit, the greatest preacher of our age if 
not of all ages; a man to whom I owe the greatest 
debt one soul can owe to another — the debt of love 
for spiritual nurture. The next two contend for the 
right and duty of progress in religious thought and 
life, and indicate certain laws which govern real prog- 
ress, and certain characteristics which distinguish it 
from mere movement. The next four deal with some 
aspects of the fundamental issue of our day, that be- 
tween Naturalism and Revelation, between religion 
that is a human product and religion that is a divine 
gift and growth. The next two treat of the church 
of God, the visible incarnation and manifestation of 
his gift to mankind. The remaining eight deal w^ith 
problems and experiences of the spiritual life in the 
individual soul. 

Neither is there, perhaps, at first view perceptible 
any connection between the title of this book and its 
contents. If, however, the sermons are read with care, 
I hope that in them will be found an expression of the 
spiritual faith of the church universal by one who 
sees, in the intellectual and spiritual movements of 
our time, signs of promise that this faith is gaining a 
deeper hold on the heart of humanity than ever 
before, and is moving forward more rapidly to its 
final and perfect victory over all forms of unbelief 
and all phases of selfishness and sensuality. 

I am indebted to the quick pencils of Arthur B, 
Cook, Henry Winans, and Robert Van Iderstine, 



PREFACE. 5 

who, without any assurance that their reports would 
ever be used, took down these sermons as they were 
delivered, and without whose aid they could not have 
been published. 

Lyman Abbott. 

Brooklyn ^ June i8, 1889. 



CONTENTS. 



SERMON 

I. A Great Leader, 
II. Death, the Interpreter, 

III. The Necessity of Progress, 

IV. The Law of Progress, . 
V. Grapes of Gall, 

VI. The Religion of Humanity, 
VII. The Agnosticism of Paul, . 
VIII. The Dogmatism of Paul, 
IX. The Church's One Foundation, 
X. The Power of the Keys, 
XI. Salvation by Growth, 
XII. Salvation by Grace, 

XIII. A Power unto Salvation, . 

XIV. Christ's Law of Love, , 
XV. The Peace of God, . 

XVI. What is the Bible? 
XVII. The Spiritual Nature, 
XVIII. Does God's Mercy Endure Forever ? 



PAGE 

• 9 
41 

. 55 
72 

. 87 

III 
. 128 

142 
. 157 

175 
. 189 

202 
. 21S 

232 
. 246 

256 
. 274 

287 



SIGNS OF PROMISE. 



A GREAT LEADER. 

HENRY WARD B EECHER: 

HIS RELATION TO THE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT AND LIFE OF THE 
NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

** Though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye 
not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through 
the gospel. Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me. 
For this cause have I sent unto you Timothy, who is my beloved 
son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance 
of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every 
church." — I Cor. iv. 15-17. 

God sends great leaders for great transition peri- 
ods. Such a period was the first century, and such a 
leader was Paul. The age was one of moral and 
spiritual barrenness. Prophecy had died out of Juda- 
ism ; poetry and living philosophy out of Greece. The 
age was a dead age. Intellect, refinement, had taken 
the place of insight ; commentaries, of the Bible ; 



Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, March 13, 1887, — the Sabbath fol- 
lowing Mr. Beecher's death. 



lO SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

ritual, of worship ; legalism imposed from without, 
of divine impulses working out a spontaneous life 
from within. In the legal and intellectual school 
Paul had been trained. He was, he tells us, a Phari- 
see, and the son of a Pharisee ; a Hebrew of the He- 
brews. He was not only educated in its philosophy, 
he was trained in its spirit. He was a child of rigor, 
and was rigorous with himself. In this atmosphere 
and under these influences he lived until he reached 
manhood. Then Christ was reveale'd to him in an 
hour of awful and glorious experience never to be 
forgotten. In seeing Christ he saw life anew. Truth 
and holiness took on thenceforth new meanings. 
He perceived that truth is life, not something apart 
from life to be merely intellectually perceived ; that 
holiness is wholeness, not the enforced obedience of 
a resisting and recalcitrant nature to an outward law, 
either human or divine ; that love, not conscience, is 
both the motive and the regulative power of life — 
love not primarily for men, but for Christ, and for 
men as loved of Christ. He went away into the 
desert, not to preach, but to meditate, to study the 
Scriptures afresh in this new light, to study life, to 
study his own heart, to be still and know God, and 
hear that still small voice which is never heard in 
the noise and bustle of life unless we first have 
learned to listen for it in the quiet of our own souls. 
From that time forth he devoted himself to leading 
the world into light which had been given to him; 
then he set himself to his life-work, to bring the 
vision which he had seen to the apprehension of his 



A GREAT LEADER. II 

fellow-men — first, of the Jewish people ; then as he 
grew more catholic, as he grew older, to the whole 
human race. One would have thought he should 
have been welcomed. So the birds and the flowers 
welcome the coming of spring ; but so, somehow, 
human hearts do not welcome the prophets that 
bring them a blessed revelation. Men shut their 
hearts against him. They shut him out, they perse- 
cuted him, they misapprehended and misinterpreted 
him. At every step of the way he had to battle 
against suspicion within the Church and enmity 
without. When he first came to Jerusalem the dis- 
ciples looked on him with suspicion and with doubt. 
When he started on his first missionary tour the 
Church shook its head in questioning. When, with- 
out any revelation from God and without any au- 
thority from the Church, finding the rite of circum- 
cision to stand between the Christ in whom he be- 
lieved and the people to whom he wished to bring 
that Christ, he flung it one side, the whole Church 
lifted up its hands in holy horror, and he was sum- 
moned to a council at Jerusalem. He went up, say- 
ing as he went : " No matter what you say, though 
an angel from heaven brought me another message, 
I would not take it. I stand by my Lord and the 
word that he has given me." They laid on him by a 
compromise certain restrictions in his future min- 
istry ; he did not at the time combat them, but he 
subsequently and habitually disregarded them. All 
his life long he was hated and persecuted by the 
school he had left, and under suspicion by the ortho- 



12 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

dox even in the Christian Church. He was not per- 
fect, not infallible, either as a man or as a teacher. 
He said it himself ; so, without irreverence, we may- 
say it for him. He had a great treasure, but it was 
in an earthen vessel. He saw what his contempora- 
ries could not see, and tried to make the vision clear 
to others. But he saw in a glass, darkly. He had 
to deal with men who thought that they knew all 
theology, had taken the stature and girth of God, 
and had comprehended the past, the present, and 
the future of his moral government ; and he told 
them that for himself he knew only in part, and 
prophesied only in part. And so he lived his life, 
fought by the Pharisaic Church from which he had 
come, doubted and suspected even by the Christian 
Church into which he had come ; a prince of orators, 
a man with that rare, wonderful gift of playing on 
the hearts of men and moving their souls and life 
which we call oratory. When the simple inhabitants 
of Lycaonia heard him preach they called him Mer- 
cury, the god of eloquence. When the great mob 
gathered in Ephesus and carried his companions into 
the theater, scarcely knowing why they had come 
thither, and shouted, some one thing and some 
another, he would have adventured himself into the 
theater, strong in the conscious power that he could 
calm the mob and rescue his companions ; his more 
prudent friends with difficulty restrained him. When 
he preached before Felix, Felix trembled : not an- 
other instance in history in which the Roman spirit 
trembled before a preacher of righteousness! When 



A GREAT LEADER, 13 

he was mobbed, flung down upon the pavement, 
rescued with difficulty by the soldiers, his hands 
manacled, his garments disheveled and covered with 
dust, he had but to raise his chained hands, and the 
wild mob stopped their howling and listened to 
what he had to say. He had all the excellences and 
all the defects of a great orator: tumultuous emo- 
tions ; a vivid and spiritualized imagination ; broad 
human sympathies ; a matchless rhetoric, but unpol- 
ished, and often breaking down under the burden of 
thought and feeling which it was required to carry ; 
intensity of emotion, a many-sidedness of nature, yet 
habitually a one-sidedness of utterance, seeing for 
the moment only the one aspect of truth, and full 
of it ; an indifference to systems and creeds and 
schools ; an enthusiasm for Christ and for the souls 
of men ; a kaleidoscopic power of life and sympathy 
as well as of utterance, that made him all things to 
all men — Greek to the Greek, Jew to the Jew ; 
equally at home in a Christian household worship, a 
Jewish synagogue, an Athenian market-place, the 
schoolroom of a Jewish pedagogue, and the palace of 
the Caesars at Rome ; equally ready to preach to 
thousands or to talk to the soldier at whose side he 
was chained ; at home with every one, except the 
Pharisaic ecclesiastic, between whom and himself 
there was eternal war ; with a mind that worked like 
lightning, and a spirit in which conflicting emotions 
chased each other as sunlight and shadow over a 
summer landscape, without ever really disturbing 
the deep serenity of his nature ; master of sarcasm, 



14 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

humor, wit, sublime and even awful eloquence. He 
was a fearless, indomitable man: bearing the horrible 
Roman scourge without murmur, following it with 
song ; sustaining a shipload of crew, passengers, and 
soldiers, panic-stricken in the presence of apparently 
impending death, and keeping them from despair by 
his own brave heart ; failing only when he yielded 
to the importunities of others, and tried prudential 
methods and skillful strategy instead of bold and 
open attack or defense ; and in and through all his 
experiences fighting his way steadily, and with the 
loneliness which is always the fate of great natures, 
but with a following which sooner or later is theirs, 
toward the larger liberty of a Gospel which brings 
to mankind the message that God is love, not wrath ; 
and law is salvation, not destruction ; and truth is 
vital, not dogmatic ; and life is spontaneity, not re- 
pression; and the call to Christ is a call to that life. 

Paul's Epistles abound in revelations of his varied 
Christian experience. Our text is one of them. They 
are all keyed to the one note— Christ. Christ is 
the motive-power of his life — ^* The love of Christ 
constraineth me.*' Christ is the power of his min- 
istry — " I determined to know nothing among you 
save Jesus Christ and him crucified." Christ is the 
world's hope — *^ Christ crucified is the power of God 
and the wisdom of God.*' Christ is the hope of the 
individual soul — " Christ in us the hope of glory." 
Christ is the power of his own life — " I can do all 
things through Christ which strengtheneth me." 
Christ is the secret of that deep soul agony which is 



A GREAT LEADER, 1 5 

the essence of all true eloquence — ** My little chil- 
dren," he cries, " of whom I travail in birth again 
until Christ be formed in you." Christ is his com- 
fort in church declensions and sectarian conflicts — 
" Whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached, 
and I then do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." Christ 
is his hope and his joy in the presence of welcome 
death — " For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain: 
for to depart and be with Christ is far better." 

You are accustomed to quick thinking in this 
house and under this roof, and you do not need that 
I should trace the parallel for j^ou. You have traced 
it for yourselves as I have spoken. We also live in 
an age of great transition. We have made a great 
departure from the Puritan theology and the Puritan 
life of the last century. There is no question about 
it. It has sometimes been misinterpreted, sometimes 
exaggerated, sometimes minimized, but it has been 
real, great, radical. And in that departure no man 
has shown more leadership or borne more prominent 
part than your pastor. If it has been a departure 
away from truth toward error, away from Christian 
faith toward unbelief and rationalism, his genius will 
be forgotten, buried in the grave where he lies. And 
if it has been a departure from a hard, cold, mis- 
taken faith to a larger, brighter, broader, truer one; 
if he has led men on toward the sunrise and the 
kingdom of God, — then his faults will be forgotten 
and buried in the grave where he lies. For we judge 
our leaders, not by their genius, but by their direc- 
tion. Celsus may have been a more brilliant man 



l6 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

than Origen, but Celsus set himself against the nas- 
cent Christianity, and Origen set himself to favor it, 
and now we know Celsus only as the man whom 
Origen answered. The Papal legate who was sent 
up from Rome to answer Luther is said to have been 
a brilliant orator, a skillful controversialist, a great 
scholar; but we have to go to our histories now to 
find his name. Calhoun w^as in intellectual ability 
the peer of Webster and of Clay, but we know him 
to-day only as the intellectual leader of a lost cause, 
who, by his eloquence and his power, gathered to- 
gether forces and massed them that their ruin might 
be more irretrievable and hopeless. 

To discuss in Plymouth Church and to its congrega- 
tion the question whether Mr. Beecher has led from a 
mistaken or an imperfect to a higher, better, broader 
revelation of God and his truth, would almost seem 
to insult you in your sorrow. And yet Peter tells us 
that we are to give an answer to those that ask a 
reason for the hope that is in us. You know who he 
was. You know whither he led you. But it is not 
enough to know: we must know why we know. And 
so to-day, glad to call myself his pupil, always in the 
past years glad to have been called his pupil, I seek 
also to bring to your remembrance the things which 
he taught you in Christ Jesus. Timothy was not an 
orator. He had none of Paul's power. He was not 
an author. He has not left a line. We only know 
him as a man who loved Paul and whom Paul loved. 
But when Paul sent him with a message, this it was: 
to gather out of his own study of Paul's teaching 



A GREAT LEADER. 1 7 

what Paul had taught. And this is my humble office 
here to-day — no, my noble office, though humbly 
and imperfectly performed. I try to set before you 
again, as well as I can with my own imperfect knowl- 
edge and in the short limits of time allotted to me, 
what was the drift, and current, and spirit, and heart 
of his teaching, and what his relation, not to the 
politics, not to the patriotic history, but to the re- 
ligious thought and life of the nineteenth century. 

Mr. Beecher was born in 1813; he graduated from 
college in 1834, at twenty-one years of age. Has the 
American world moved forward or backward since 
that time ? Has he helped or hindered its move- 
ment ? 

What was the condition of religious life, at the 
time of his birth, in the Puritan churches of New 
England ? Intemperance was all but universal. It 
entered not only every village, it entered every home, 
it entered the church of Christ, it polluted with its 
noisome odors even the parsonage on ministerial 
gatherings and ordinations; and the church said 
nothing. And when Dr. Lyman Beecher, himself a 
progressive and radical man, undertook to lead a 
warfare against it, conservative men cried out, " No, 
no !'* They repelled his rashness. Slavery held not 
merely three millions of slaves in bondage, but the 
whole Nation formed openly and before all the world 
its plan for making slavery the dominant power of 
America, mapping out great tracts of land tliat 
should be turned into a slave empire; denied the 
right of petition in the House of Representatives; 



1 8 S/GXS OF PROMISE, 

and the church looked almost idly and silently on — 
here and there single voices raised, but no great con- 
science roused against it. There was no missionary 
zeal, there was no Board of Missions, home or for- 
eign. The American Board, mother of them all, was 
born only three years before Mr. Beecher was born, 
and then against the opposition of conservatism, 
making its way against open antagonism and against 
cold, hard indifference on every hand. Infidelity 
was common. Tom Paine was far more popular in 
the beginning of this century than Robert Ingersoll 
is in our day, and Byron more read and admired 
than our Swinburne. When President Dwight be- 
gan his sermons in Yale College, it is said there were 
only two professing Christians in that college, and 
two Tom Paine societies. Long creeds were being 
substituted for the short and simple covenants of 
the earlier Puritans, in a vain hope thus to turn back 
the current. The great Unitarian defection had 
already begun with the settling of Channing in Bos- 
ton in 1803 — a defection which became organic in the 
formation of the Unitarian Association in 1825 : a re- 
volt and reaction against the New England Puritan 
theology which had made man an automaton and 
God a glacier, but tending, as all such reactions do, 
to a denial of the profound spiritual truths that 
lay buried beneath that Puritan theology as flowers 
beneath the snow in spring. There was already im- 
pending the battle between Old School and New 
School, which subsequently rent the Presbyterian 
denomination into two denominations, and would 



A GREAT LEADER. 1 9 

have rent the Congregationalists into two denomi- 
nations — only you cannot rend a lot of separated 
threads. That was the legacy which the Puritan 
theology of the eighteenth century had left New 
England — a church dumb in the presence of slavery, 
dumb in the presence of intemperance ; a church 
without any missionary aggressive piety ; a church 
already threatened by a great defection that carried 
off pure, wise, strong men ; a church through which 
the knife of division and strife was already begin- 
ning to be run. Into that age Mr. Beecher was born. 
In that age he was educated. He was brought up 
in the midst of the battle between Old and New 
School, between sovereignty of God and free will of 
man. We have made a great departure since then. 
He has led it. What has been the direction of that 
departure ? In what direction has he led ? 

I. In the first place, we have certainly made a de- 
parture toward a more practical and ethical religion. 
In America to-day, whether we call ourselves pupils of 
Mr. Beecher or not, we believe in a religion that has 
its place in the forum, on the rostrum, in the court- 
house, in the market-place, in the home, in every de- 
partment where man lives and acts. We have seen 
a conscience arouse itself, and take slavery by the 
throat, and grapple with it in a life-and-death strug- 
gle, until slavery lay gasping and dead upon the 
ground. We have twice seen an aroused conscience 
drive out municipal thieves from that city yonder, 
and send them to keep company with private thieves. 
We have seen that same aroused conscience mak- 



20 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

ing itself felt on the temperance question, and the 
women of this country binding themselves together 
in a holy crusade, resolved that their prayers, their 
tears, and their labors shall not end until this 
great enemy comes to a perpetual end. We have 
seen a religious life and influence going out from 
ten thousand pulpits, bearing its witness against sin 
in the home, against sin in government, against 
sin in private, against sin in every department 
and phase of life. We have seen an American people 
rousing themselves and declaring that this shall 
be a government of the people, for the people, and 
by the people, and not a government of the machine, 
for the machine, and by the machine ; and seen an 
agitation, sometimes blind, sometimes ignorant, and 
yet truly divinely inspired, working to write the 
Golden Rule into every factory and into every ma- 
chine-shop, and into every store and into every mar- 
ket-place, until laborer and capitalist come to under- 
stand that they are partners in a common enterprise, 
and until the church-bells that ring out the song of 
the Fatherhood of God on every Sunday shall key 
the factory-bells to the same great note, and the 
chimes shall run across the continent, from ocean to 
ocean, of the brotherhood of men in every week-day. 
In this great movement toward a practical and an 
ethical religion you all know that Mr. Beecher has 
been the leader. His relation to it is acknowledged 
of all men. In all this battling, this Henry of Na- 
varre has been in the front. Wherever the shots 
have fallen thickest and fastest, there has he d©- 



A GREAT LEADER. 21 

lighted to be. Wherever there was danger, his sword 
has flashed in the sunshine. We all know that, and 
we all honor him for that — they that believe and they 
that doubt, alike. 

n. This progress toward a more ethical and prac- 
tical religion has been accompanied and produced 
by a progress toward a more interior and spiritual 
religion. The Puritan religion was a religion of in- 
tellect and will. It left the sensibilities out of ac- 
count. The theory of Puritanism was : If men can 
be convinced of the truth, and resolve to follow it, 
they are converted, and the work is done. All 
preaching was keyed accordingly. Go back fifty or 
seventy-five years and take the classic sermons of 
that period, and you will find they all run in the 
same mold — the greater part of the sermon the expo- 
sition of a doctrine, logically demonstrated, with a 
few words of application in the demand : " Now you 
know the truth, you must follow it." Sin was re- 
bellion against God: conversion was laying down 
the weapons of one*s rebellion and resolving to enter 
into allegiance to God. The whole end of preach- 
ing was to convince the intellect and persuade or 
coerce the will. It rarely, if ever, went deeper; rarely, 
if ever, recognized that there was a deeper depth. 
There was almost no emotional preaching ; almost 
no preaching to the heart ; almost no attempt to go 
down beneath the intellect and beneath the sensibili- 
ties to the motive-powers of the soul. Now, a man 
is not intellect and will alone, and the intellect and 
the will do not determine his character. Man's char- 



22 S/GA'S OF PROMISE. 

acter is not made by his creed ; his creed is made 
by his character. The life in the tree of last year 
throws out the bark of this year ; the life that is 
in the heart of to-day throws out the creed of to- 
morrow. Dogmas are creatures, not creators. The 
murderer shoots his victim, not because he is intel- 
lectually convinced that it is either wise or right ; 
the young man goes down the way that leads unto 
death, not because it is his opinion that that is a safe 
and prudent road to travel; but each because his ap- 
petites and his passions have never been broken to the 
saddle and the bridle, and, Mazeppa-like, he is bound 
to the beast that carries him v/hither it will. We are 
recognizing this to-day. There is not so much doc- 
trinal preaching ; there is a departure from it. 
There is not so much stress laid on creeds ; there is 
a departure from them. But there is a great deal 
more stress laid on motive-powders, on the elem.ents 
out of which the life itself effloresces and growls. It 
was flung in Mr. Beecher's face, while he lived, that 
he W'as a preacher of emotionalism. It has been said 
in kindly criticism, since his death, that he was not a 
logical preacher. This is certainly true. If the great- 
est and best safeguard of character is a creed, then Mr. 
Beecher made one lifelong mistake. If men are fash- 
ioned and patterned, not by the motive-powers vyith- 
in, but by the opinions which they have learned from 
school, platform, or pulpit, his theology was radically 
wrong. He w^rought purposely on men's emotions, 
that he might lay hold on the inward hearts and lives 
of men. He endeavored, not to bring you to his think- 






A GREAT LEADER. 23 

ing, but through thinking to his life. He sought to 
brood in you that love of God and love of men 
which casts out the spirit of covetousness and pride 
and vainglory and malignancy and all evil. Philoso- 
phy had tried for many a year and in many a form 
and phase to cast the evil spirit out of men, and they 
obeyed it not. Not until Christ came with his word, 
saying, ^' Go thou out of him, and enter no more into 
him," did the demon in human nature obey. And 
the departure from the Puritan theology of the past 
to the wider, brighter, and better theology of the pres- 
ent and the future — a departure which your pastor 
led — was toward a ministry that should bring Christ 
into the inward heart and life, which should lay hold 
on the very motive-powers of being. Cast the devil 
out by putting Christ in. You cannot train a thistle 
so that it will become a rose. You must change the 
seed out of which the thistle comes. Preaching to 
the heart is true preaching. 

. III. With this there has grown in America, and es- 
pecially in the Puritan churches of America, a larger 
conception of the revelation of God. The Puritan 
believed that God had revealed himself once for all, 
and had finished and completed the revelation eigh- 
teen hundred years ago, and that the book was sealed 
and nothing could be added to it ; that God had de- 
parted from the world and no more communicated 
himself to men. He had disclosed himself once, but 
he was not disclosing himself now ; he had brooded 
over human hearts once, but he was not brooding 
over human hearts now. There was no mystical cle- 



SIC 



Jfp/wmise. 



ment in the Puritan. Or, if somehow that mysticism 
v/hich is in all noble souls sprang up in them despite 
themselves, they repressed it with a remorseless 
vigor. The persecutions with which they pursued 
the Anabaptists and the Quakers, and all who made 
profession of the faith in an Inner Light, were but 
the outward symbols of a vigor with which they 
persecuted every like tendency in themselves. The 
Bible was the infallible revelation of God : and the 
only revelation. All pagan prophets and seers were 
Antichrists, children of the devil, blind leaders of the 
blind ; they who had gone before Christ were but 
thieves and robbers. Only the most catholic and 
liberal among them could even concede that God's 
Spirit had ever dwelt in other than Puritan hearts, 
that the Romanist, the Churchman, the Quaker, could 
read aright his Word or receive his saving grace. As 
to progress in revelation, the most which even the 
most progressive Puritans could declare was that 
progress might be made toward a better understand- 
ing of the completed revelation in the Sacred Book. 

If a Puritan congregation of a hundred years ago 
could have heard Dr. Charles H. Hall's address 
at the funeral services of Mr. Beecher, they would 
have revolted at the doctrine that any man could 
add a line or a page to the life of Christ, as though 
that could be an unfinished life. That which to 
all our hearts commended itself — as true as it was 
beautiful, and as beautiful as it was true — would 
have been repudiated by the theology of a hundred 
years ago. 



A GREAT LEADER. 2$ 

This conception of a progressive revelation carries 
with it by necessity a recognition of the fact that the 
revelation of the past is an imperfect one. The Bible 
not perfect ? Paul thought it Vv^as not. He said, 
" We prophesy in part,'* and " We see through a 
glass, darkly." If I cannot take the measure even of 
my dear friend; if, notwithstanding my years of in- 
tercourse with him and my study of his thought, 
still I know there are heights in him which I never 
ascended, depths in his nature which my plummet 
never sounded, recesses into which I never was ad- 
mitted, — oh, can I think that any man, in times 
present or in times past, has taken the girth of God, 
knows his height and length and breadth, has re- 
produced a plaster cast of his countenance, and 
thrown him up in a written word, in unchangeable 
bronze, for all time to come ? To Mr. Beecher books 
were always instruments, means to an end ; and this 
best of all books was only means to an end. There is 
only one end in life — that is, God ; and if ever he grew 
impatient with men, I think it was when he saw them 
studying the windovvr, — nay, hardly that, — studying 
the cobwebs and the dirt that were incrusted upon 
the window, instead of sweeping them all away and 
basking in the sunlight of God's love that streamed 
in through the clear pane, and loving him. Yet 
men call that unbelief ! 

This carries with it, too, a conception of a larger, 
broader, and more progressive revelation. God is for- 
ever revealing himself, and always has been reveal- 
ing himself. He has spoken through ten thousand 



26 s/GjVS of promise. 

prophets. Wherever any man has set himself to open 
the eyes of the blind, to heal the sick, to comfort the 
mourner, to lift up the degraded and the downcast, 
there God has been speaking, there God has been 
working. To the end of time he will carry on this 
great revelation of himself. The Gospels tell us 
that Jesus Christ grew in stature and in wisdom. As 
in that epoch of the Incarnation, so ever since, he has 
been growing in stature; as then, coming to human 
consciousness and embodiment in a single human life, 
so since, coming to consciousness and embodiment in 
the whole human race. He has been revealing him- 
self to human souls; human souls have been opening 
to receive his revelation. This, if I mistake not, was 
Mr. Beecher's doctrine of evolution. It was not with 
him a question where man came from. That was in- 
cidental. It was not with him a question of scientific 
adjustment. That was incidental. The great radical 
and fundamental truth that w^rought in him mightily 
was this: that from the beginning until now, and from 
now until the great work and kingdom of God is con- 
summated, God has been and will be unfolding himself 
and revealing himself and writing himself in human 
life, in human history, in human experience. There 
w^as not, therefore, a single phase of Christian faith 
that he did not study that he might see a Christ 
therein; not a phenomenon of nature that he did not 
see in it the manifestation of God. He believed that 
the voice of God thundered as truly in the Catskills 
or the Berkshire Hills as that it spoke in the thunders 
which David heard in Judea's hill-country. He be- 



A GREAT LEADER. 2/ 

lieved that the tread of the Almighty was as much to 
be seen in the earthquake shock in Charleston as in 
the earthquake shock that devoured the Cities of the 
Plain. He believed, too, in the universal guidance of 
God. He believed that God guided the American 
Nation as truly as he ever guided Israel, and v^^as at 
the right hand of Abraham Lincoln as truly as by the 
right hand of Moses. In brief, he believed that in- 
spiration and revelation are not isolated historical, 
episodical facts, but are the universal fact of human 
life and history ; that in God we all live and move 
and have our being. This faith grew upon him; and 
as it grew, he grew away from the traditional theories 
of inspiration and revelation as a finished and com- 
pleted product; and with this growth his preaching 
grew broader and deeper and larger and more truly 
spiritual, and to some minds more unorthodox. If 
Paul was mistaken, if the letter does not kill nor the 
spirit make alive, Mr. Beecher shared his mistake with 
him. If that faith which believes that God breathed 
on the babe but breathes not on. the youth ; that he 
spoke eighteen centuries ago, but has since been dumb; 
that the ancient prophets had ears to hear him, but 
there are none such now; that the ladder is down be- 
tween heaven and earth, and no angels ascend and 
descend now — if that be the true faith, then Mr. 
Beecher*s was untrue, and his critics did well to antag- 
onize him. For no man has done more — not even 
Horace Bushnell — to teach the world that God is a 
living God, and souls are living souls, and the eternal 
Word is a word that speaks and will speak as long 



28 S/GXS OF PROMISE. 

as God is light and love, and men in their darkness 
and their stumbling need him. 

IV. Holding this faith, he held, of course, to the 
veracity and trustworthiness of Christian conscious- 
ness, and constantly appealed to it — not as some- 
thing independent of the Bible, antagonistic to the 
Bible, superior to the Bible, but as its co-witness. 
Out of the mouth of two witnesses was every word 
established. The Bible is the voice of Christian con- 
sciousness in the past. Christian consciousness now 
is the voice of the Bible God is ever writing in the 
hearts of his children. God revealed himself to the 
Christian consciousness of the seers of old; they 
wrote down that revelation: their record is the Bible. 
God is still revealing himself in the Christian con- 
sciousness of the present. This also is his revelation. 
It is Christ /;/ us that is the light; Christ in us that is 
the hope of our glory; not Christ in some one else, 
whose experience has been embalmed in history. 

I said a few moments ago that Mr. Beecher endeav- 
ored to get down beneath the intellect, beneath the 
will, into the heart and spiritual nature, the motive 
powers. He tried to do this, not merely by playing 
on these emotions himself with his master hand, but 
by opening them to the greater hand of the Divine 
Master. It was not in his own light he sought to make 
you walk, but in the light of God. This interprets 
his audacious courage in dealing with every form of 
unbelief. He flung the doors of his soul wide open 
to every kind of serious thinking, and barred them 
tightly against every form of thinking that was not 



A GREAT LEADER, 2g 

serious. He has been called a mystic. He was not a 
mystic. A mystic is a man who believes that the 
revelation of God is in his own consciousness, and 
dares not interrogate it. Mr. Beecher never hesi- 
tated to bring the testimony of that consciousness 
into the court-room of the reason, put it on the wit- 
ness stand, and cross-examine it in the clear light of 
scientific discovery. He has been called a rationalist. 
He was not a rationalist. A rationalist is a man who 
believes that religion is founded on the reason; that 
reason is the highest faculty in man; that the reason, 
which God gave us not for constructive but for criti- 
, cal purposes, is the faculty with which we are to con- 
struct our religious faith. That Mr. Beecher never 
believed. His faith was wrought within him, and 
therefore he dared submit it to every questioning. A 
theology which goes back eighteen centuries for the 
witness and evidence of itself, which rears a system 
of dogmatism that is purely logical and scientific, al- 
ways fears skepticism, and therefore always provokes 
it. Mysticism is not the mother of unbelief; dogmat- 
ism is. He, who had been on the mountain-top with 
Moses, and talked with him face to face; he, who had 
been on the mountain-top with Peter and with James 
and John, and seen the illuminated face of his Lord; 
he, who had been in the Isle of Patmos in spirit on 
the Lord*s Day, and had beheld him as one in the 
likeness of the Son of man, and heard the thunder of 
his voice, and beheld the glory of his countenance; 
he, who in all the common ways of life walked with 
God; he, who knew in his own heart that experience 



30 



SIGNS OF PROMISE. 



which Faber has so beautifully put — he, to whom 
" God was never so far off as even to be near" — he 
had no fear. He could not fear what any philosophy 
or any science might say to him. His mind was as 
open to doubts as to convictions, because his faith 
was founded on that which is deeper than either. 

O you that are his pupils, learn, in this age of un- 
belief, this lesson: God is not an embalmed God, in 
a dead book. Christ is not a crucified and buried 
Christ, with seals upon the tomb. God is a living 
God in the hearts of all that love him; and Christ is 
a risen Christ, that marches on before; and we are 
his followers. 

V. It needs only brief recognition here, that other 
truth fundamental in his preaching, that God is love. 
To the Puritan, God was not love. The Puritan con- 
ception of God was represented by the most familiar 
phrase used to describe him — the "Moral Governor 
of the universe." Even Dr. Lyman Beecher, when he 
was to preach an ordination sermon in Boston, said: 
"The word of God is a code of law which the Moral 
Governor of the universe has given us to set forth his 
glory in the salvation of men." I think you might 
look through the sermons of Emmons and Edwards 
in vain for even the phrase "fatherhood of God." 
You v/ill scarcely find it in the sermons of Lyman 
Beecher. That God is a King, and that we owe him 
obedience: that was the Puritan conception of duty 
and of religion. To Mr. Beecher— O, you know it 
better than I can tell you, far, far better, you who 
heard him here from Sabbath to Sabbath ! — to Mr. 



A GREAT LEADER, 3 1 

Beecher Christ is God: not a message sent from God; 
not a Some-one coming between God and the human 
soul to appease God and let the human soul into a 
covenanted mercy; not a manifestation of the mercy 
of God holding back the wrath of God for a little 
while, as hounds are held back by the leash until it is 
cut and they are set free; but GOD. No wrath in 
God that there was not in Christ; no justice in God 
that there was not in Christ; no judgment throne on 
which God ever sat, or ever will sit, that Christ himself 
did not reveal in his judging; and no meekness, tender- 
ness, patience, long-suffering love in Christ, no sym.pa- 
thetic tears in him, that were not in the Father whom 
he brought to earth. When your pastor preached that 
famous sermon on the " Background of Mystery,** 
which created so much excitement and produced so 
much criticism, I went to him with the proofs of it. It 
was to be published in The Christian Union., and I said 
to him: *^ Mr. Beecher, this serm^on you must revise." 
I think it was the only time I ever had a controversy 
with Mr. Beecher and came out best, but he yielded 
that time. He didn't like to revise; and he worked 
over it, altering and modifying and changing, and I 
pointed out to him some expressions which I said 
were well enough in the heat of extemporaneous de- 
bate, but they ought not to go out before the public 
in the cold atmosphere of type. And then I remem- 
ber his turning to me, his great form growing greater, 
and the great brow growing higher, and his great eyes 
flashing fire, as he said something like this: "There 
are times, in preaching, when I have a conception of 



32 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

the greatness and the goodness and the mercy and 
the love of my God, and then see by the side of it the 
hideous idols that are put up in Christian temples 
and represented in Christian literature, that are ma- 
ligning my God; and I hate them, as the old Hebrew 
prophet hated the idols of old time, with an unutter- 
able hatred; and'* — then, with one of those sudden 
transitions, he dropped back and said — '* something's 
got to give way." He believed in the awfulness of 
sin and the terrible sanction of its punishment; but 
he did not believe, and the future will not believe, in 
a punishment without reason, in a punishment that 
has no other ground in it than a retributive instinct 
in a God that knows not what he is doing. He be- 
lieved in atonement, he believed in sacrifice; but he 
did not believe in an atoning Saviour appeasing the 
wrath of God. He believed in a Christ whose suffer- 
ings were the manifestation on earth of the sufferings 
which the infinite and eternal Father bears in his 
heart toward all his sinful and sorrowing children, 
and which he will bear there until, by his eternal sac- 
rifice, he has borne them away forever. 

VI. All this preaching was born of his own experi- 
ence. As Paul was educated in the rigorous school 
of Pharisaism, so v/as Mr. Beecher in the rigid school 
of New England Calvinism, ameliorated by the fer- 
vent nature of his father and the mystical piety of his 
stepmother. But he came not to his true self until 
his twenty-first year, and then through a revelation 
as truly supernatural as that which shone on Paul on 
his way to Damascus. You remember how he tells it: 



A GREAT LEADER. 33 

"I know not what the tablets of eternity have written 
down, but I think that when I stand in Zion and before 
God, the brightest thing which I shall look back upon will 
be that blessed morning of May when it pleased God to 
reveal to my wandering soul the idea that it was his nature 
to love a man in his sins for the sake of helping him out of 
them ; that he did not do it out of compliment to Christ, or 
to a law or a plan of salvation, but from the fullness of his 
great heart ; that he was a being not made mad by sin, but 
sorry ; that he v;as not furious with wrath toward the sinner, 
but pitied him, — in short, that he felt toward me as my 
mother felt toward me, to whose eyes my wrong-doing 
brought tears, who never pressed me so close to her as when 
1 had done wrong, and who would fain, with her yearning 
love, lift me out of trouble. And when I found that Jesus 
Christ had such a disposition, and that when his disciples 
did wrong he drew them closer to him than he did before — 
and when pride and jealousy and rivalry, and all vulgar and 
worldly feelings, rankled in their bosoms, he opened his 
heart to them as a medicine to heal these infirmities; when 
I found that it was Christ's nature to lift men out of weak- 
ness to strength, out of impurity to goodness, out of every- 
thing low and debasing to superiority, I felt that I had found 
a God. I shall never forget the feelings with which I walked 
forth that May morning. The golden pavements will never 
feel to my feet as then the grass felt to them ; and the sing- 
ing of the birds in the woods — for I roamed in the woods — 
was cacophonous to the sweet music of my thoughts ; and 
there were no forms in the universe which seemed to me 
graceful enough to represent the Being a conception of 
whose character had just dawned upon my mind. I felt, 
when I had, with the Psalmist, called upon the heavens, the 
earth, the mountains, the streams, the floods, the birds, the 
beasts, and universal being to praise God, that I had called 



34 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

upon nothing that could praise him enough for the revela- 
tion of such a nature as that seen in the Lord Jesus Christ.'* 

This vision never left him. It grew brighter and 
clearer as a personal presence to the day of his death. 
This was the power which sustained him in all hours 
of conflict; this the light which illuminated all hours 
of darkness. Some of you remember his account of 
the spiritual battle through which he went before 
that first memorable speech in England; and how at 
length he came through it with such nearness to 
Christ that never in his closet did Christ seem nearer 
to him than when on the platform of Manchester he 
faced the roaring bulls of Bashan. Some of you will 
recall how, when a great shadow fell upon his church 
and his friends, and we walked for him in fear and at 
times in a horror of great darkness, he walked lu- 
minous, going up to his Passion as his Master, and 
sustained by the same invisible Presence. You will 
all recall how, when, in this city, on the occasion of his 
seventieth birthday, citizens of all classes and creeds 
came together to crown him as a patriot, an orator, 
a philanthropist, and a preacher, he took the coronet 
which had been proffered him, and, disowning all 
praise, laid it at the feet of the Christ whose servant 
and instrument he had been. Those of you who 
knew him best knew how in all his life he was a pupil 
at the Master's feet, and taught his pupils only what 
from week to week he had learned of Christ; how 
always his message to you was. Be ye followers of me 
as I also am of Christ; so far, no farther. 

Did you ever ask yourself the question why John 



A GREAT LEADER. 35 

was the beloved disciple ? Not because he was by- 
nature the most unworldly: it was John who went 
with his brother, just before the Passion, to ask 
Christ for the best offices, at his right hand and his 
left; he was the first of all the ecclesiastical office- 
seekers in the Christian Church. Not because he was 
by nature gentle: it was John who would have called 
down fire from heaven on the Samaritan village that 
refused them entrance. It was because he always 
had an open heart to Christ. You that teach in the 
Sunday-school or in the home circle, you know the 
difference. There are some people whose hearts you 
have to enter as men enter a beleaguered fortress: 
you are fought every step of the way; you have to 
make your way over felled trees; you have to swim 
a moat; you have to climb a wall; you have to battle 
your way step by step through the streets until you 
get to the citadel. And there are others that fling 
their hearts open, ready to receive whatsoever you 
have to say, and to sift it for themselves and find in 
God's clear light what the truth is. The beloved 
preacher is the open-minded preacher. The public 
knew Mr. Beecher as an outgiver; but some of us, that 
knew him better than the public, knew him to be the 
most receptive of men. There was no man so poor, 
there was no child so feeble or so ignorant, that Mr. 
Beecher would not learn a lesson from them. There 
was no doctrine so hateful that he would not look to 
see if there might not be a Christ in it. There was 
no paganism so far from Christianity that he would 
not search it to see if there was some striving of the 



36 S/G.VS OF PROMISE, 

Holy Spirit in it. He was catholic, not merely be- 
cause he was a man of broad human sympathies, but 
because he believed in Christ everyw^here, and every- 
where went looking for him. 

They that think the Puritan theology was an in- 
fallibly right theology; they who believe in a religion 
that had naught to say to slavery or intemperance, 
who believe in a religion too sacred or too tender to 
go out into the market-place and the busy, bustling, 
hustling haunts of men; they who wish it kept for 
the Sabbath and the sanctuary; they who believe 
that man is intellect and will alone, and have no 
faith in a preaching that tries to lay hold of the 
hearts of men, who think that creed is a better safe- 
guard than love in the soul; they who believe that 
God finished his revelation eighteen centuries ago, 
and has had no word to speak to human souls since 
then, or human souls no ears to listen to it; they 
whose faith is founded on a dogma and dares not face 
a living doubt; they who believe that God is not the 
Father of the human race, but the Moral Governor 
of the universe; who believe, as one representative 
of this school has expressed it, that God " must be 
just, but viay be merciful" — they did well to antag- 
onize Mr. Beecher while he lived, and they wull do 
w^ell to antagonize his influence now that he is gone. 
But those of us w^ho believe that religion is the trans- 
formation of the inward sources of life; that we are 
to keep the heart, for out of it are all the issues of 
life; that God is forever revealing and unfolding 
himself in the eternal ministr}^ of his Word; that this 



A GREA T LEADER. 37 

Book is indeed the Word of God, but not the only 
Word that he has spoken — that he is ever speaking, 
and will speak on till the end of time — that that life 
of Christ is never finished; and those of us whose 
faith in God is founded, not on what others, living 
or dead, have told us about him, but on this, that he 
is in our own hearts* life, transforming us, guiding 
us, uplifting us; those of us who believe that Christ 
is God and God is love, that he v/ill not keep his 
anger, and that his mercy endureth forever — we take 
here, by his open grave, a solemn pledge one with 
another, that, God helping us, neither by the falsity 
of our lives, nor the folly of our lips, nor the frailty 
of our poor, weak purposes, will we ever do dishonor 
to the man we loved on earth and the teaching that 
he left us as his legacy when he died. Men may say 
what they will, or forbear saying. It is nothing to 
him, and it is not much to us. For they never can 
take out of the human brain what Mr. Beecher has 
put into it, nor out of the human heart the impulses 
to righteousness and love which Mr. Beecher has 
wrought therein. 

There are some of you, I suppose, here this day, 
who heard Mr. Beecher Sabbath after Sabbath pre- 
sent this living Christ to you as your living Saviour, 
and yet you have not accepted him. You loved Mr. 
Beecher, but you do not love Christ. You followed 
Mr. Beecher, but you do not follow Christ. You ac- 
cepted Mr. Beecher, but you do not accept Christ. 
O, it would be folly for me to try to plead with you 
to-day: will you not, O, will you not listen to his 



38 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

pleading that never pleaded so eloquently with his 
living lips as he pleads to-day with his closed ones? 
Are there not some of you who on the next Com- 
munion Sabbath will gladden his heart in heaven 
by answering to the appeal that he put before you on 
earth? For there is joy in heaven over one sinner 
that repenteth; and that is one way in which you can 
do something for him, even now. 

Members of Plymouth Church, what can I say to 
you? Nothing. I will ask him to say something to 
you. I know you would rather listen to him. I 
would rather you should. In 1863, just as he was 
about leaving this country for that memorable trip 
to England which won for this nation so much and 
for him so world-wide a reputation, he talked with 
you quietly in your lecture-room of his experiences. 
He did not know whether he should live to see your 
faces again, and in that hour and in that thought, 
living very close to eternity, as he always did, he told 
you what life seemed to him., and he told you what 
he wished for you. 

This was twenty-four years ago, when, although 
he had not yet reached the plenitude of his great 
powers or the breadth of that wide-reaching personal 
influence he was to exert, he was nevertheless in 
full consciousness of a happy and successful career. 
Hear, then, what foundation this man had built on, 
and remember how in later years it served him, in 
storms of life more dreadful than death, which God 
had appointed him to endure: 

" I look forward more and more, of course, every 



A GREAT LEADER. 39 

year, to dying. Death is no longer a disagreeable 
topic to me. On the contrary, life is not half so 
attractive as it once was. I suppose I know just 
how an apple stem feels when the apple is ripe and 
ready to fall. It feels all the time that the apple is 
letting go. And I feel many fibers of my stem letting 
go. Sometimes I have been almost superstitious in 
the thought that the emotions which I have expe- 
rienced in this regard were foretokens and indications 
of approaching dissolution. If it be so, blessed be 
God. It is better to depart, and be with Christ, than 
to live even here and with you. I cannot conceive 
any ministerial life to be more happy or to be more 
eminently favored than mine has been — than mine is. 
If there is any other place that can be better than 
such a one as mine, surely it must be heaven, where 
Christ is in all his glory. 

" I look forward with increasing joy. To me death 
is utterly unterrible. The future that lies beyond it 
becomes less and less dark and obscure, and heaven 
becomes more and more rich. The path before me 
is all the way full of Christ. The threshold of the 
sacred precinct, the whole vast domain of the future 
— it is all Christ to my thought. I rejoice in it. So 
it has been even in sorrow, and so I think it would 
still be in new sorrows. I can do all things, Christ 
strengthening me — all things but being good ! I 
have sometimes thought that that would have to be 
excepted as long as we wore these mortal bodies; but 
I can do all things, so far as they are done at all, 
through Christ who strengthens me. 



40 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

" And SO I have talked to you by the way. I have 
conversed with you in respect to Christ. It seemed 
right that I should say these fev/ words — that I should 
make this profession of my faith. 

** Earlier in my ministry I preached more about 
Christ than later in my ministry; and it may seem to 
some as if I had perhaps changed my mind, or had 
had some different experience. Therefore I want, as 
this may be the last lecture that I shall ever speak to 
you, to say that Christ has been to me everything. 
Every letter in the whole alphabet of religion, so far 
as I have read, has been Christ. Whatever other 
things I may have seemed to spell, the root has al- 
ways been the offspring of David. 

"And my desire for you could be comprehended in 
the same general range. It is that you may know 
Christ, and the power of his resurrection; that you 
may experience communion with him, and feel the 
joy of his soul; that he may become to you a pres- 
ence and a companion; that you may love him, and 
be consciously loved by him; that you may rest in 
him in your sorrow; that you may trust in him in 
your fear and in your hours of anguish. My desire 
is that in all the wondrous lore of earthly experience 
you may have a Christ with you — a Christ whose 
hands were pierced to teach you duties that are so 
hard as to pierce and rend you; a Christ whose very 
heart v/as lacerated to teach you to take the spear- 
point. Yes, whatever may befall you, my desire is, 
for you, Christ; for your children, Christ; for your 
own life here, Christ; and for that better life, which 
we cannot call dying, Christ !" 



11. 

DEATH, THE INTERPRETER. 

" Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that 
I go away : for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto 
you ; but if I depart, I will send him unto you." — John xvi. 7. 

In the original the language is still stronger. It 
may be properly read thus : " Nevertheless, I tell 
you the truth ; it is for your advantage that I am 
going away : for if I go not away, the Comforter 
will not come unto you ; but if I depart, I will send 
him unto you.** 

These words occur, as you all know, in Christ's 
last conversation, just before his crucifixion. That 
conference was occupied by him, not in receiving 
comfort and strength from his friends, but in im- 
parting comfort and strength to them. He began 
by simply saying to them, " You have faith in God ; 
have faith also in me.** He led them up by succes- 
sive stages into the mystery of divine consolation 
and strength, and finally reached its consummation 
in these words: " It is for your advantage that I am 
going away.** I do not suppose that they believed 
him. I do not think they could have believed him, 
— that it could be a gain to them that he should de- 
Plymouth Church, Sunday morning, April 17, 1SS7. 

41 



42 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

part from them ; this was paradoxical, inexplicable, 
impossible. They had been called from the com- 
mon walks of life ; there was no one of them that 
had received what we call a fine education ; no one 
of them that in after life displayed any great genius, 
except John ; no one of them that had shown up to 
this time any strength or individuality of action ; no 
one of them that had been theologically educated ; 
no one of them that showed great spiritual insight 
and spiritual power. They were absolutely depend- 
ent upon him : all that they were he made them ; 
all that they possessed he had given them; when they 
were with him they were strong ; when they were 
separated from him they were weak; and now he 
told them that it was for their benefit that he was 
going away, — that they would gain by it. And yet, 
looking back through the centuries, we see that it is 
true, — we see that Christianity gained by the death of 
Christ ; the cause gained, and the individual disciples 
gained. We see Peter a coward while Christ was liv- 
ing : when Christ was with him, brave ; when Christ 
left him, denying his Master with oaths and curs- 
ing ; the moment that Christ looked upon him, turn- 
ing back again, and weeping over his disgrace. We 
see this same Peter, a few weeks after Christ's death, 
standing before the Sanhedrim, and saying: "It 
matters not what you say; we serve God, and not 
men." We see John, who had been sensuous and 
ambitious, growing loving and tender and spiritual 
and unambitious. We see Paul taking the Gospel of 
Christ, which while the Master lived had not been 



DEATH, THE INTERPRETER, 43 

preached outside of Palestine, and had made few 
converts even there, — we see Paul carrying this Gos- 
pel throughout Asia Minor, across the Hellespont 
and into Europe, upon a world crusade. Not the 
manger is the cradle of Christianity, but the cross. 
Its birthday is not Christmas, but Good Friday and 
Easter, which are only the two sides — the earthly and 
the heavenly— of the same day. 

Now, we are not to suppose that this gain which 
Christianity has made from the death of Christ is 
peculiar ; we are not to imagine that God had made 
an artificial rule, saying, " I will not send the Holy 
Spirit to the church until after the Son has been 
crucified.** We are always to look for the interpre- 
tation of the great spiritual phenomena in the lower 
spiritual phenomena ; and if we look back over the 
history of the church, we find what Christ said may 
be said by any great Christian leader: "It is for 
your benefit that I am going away." If we look 
back over the history of the Christian Church, we 
see that great causes have always been benefited and 
never injured by the death of their greatest ex- 
pounders and leaders. This suggests to me the 
theme for our thought this morning — the advantage 
to a great cause in the death of its great leader. 
This is a paradox, but there are many paradoxes 
that are true. 

I. In the first place, we never come to know any 
man while he is with us. The world's best judg- 
ments of men are formed after their death. Christ 
himself was not known while he lived. His twelve 



44 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

disciples, while they were in fellowship and com- 
panionship with him and walking by his side, rest- 
ing even on his bosom, never realized that he was 
the Son of God. It is sometimes said by the Uni- 
tarians that the doctrine of the divinity of Christ 
is not found in the four Gospels ; that it is a later 
addition ; that it is found only in the Epistles of 
Paul. There is a measure of truth in this state- 
ment. The seed or germ or hint only of Christ's 
divinity is found in the four Evangels, because while 
Christ lived it was impossible that a just, full, and 
large spiritual conception of his character should 
have been formed. It never is in human history. 
You know that the mother always loves best the 
child that is dead. It is not because the child that 
is dead was better than all the children that are liv- 
ing, but because death brings the loved ones nearer 
to us than life ever brings them. You will never 
know your wife till she has gone from you. We 
never realize the meaning of Good-morning until we 
have said Good-by. The hand-shake and the sad 
farewell bring hearts nearest to one another. So the 
world never knows its great men while they live. 
We have seen in our own country illustrations of 
this. While he lived, Abraham Lincoln was the 
most hated man of all Americans throughout the 
South. The moment that man who counted himself 
Abraham Lincoln's enemy, but proved unwittingly a 
friend to his memory, shot him, that moment the 
South began to recover its reason, and to-day the 
martyred President is honored South as well as 



DEATH, THE INTERPRETER, 45 

North. Death enabled them to comprehend him. 
We have known, here in our very midst, one who 
while he lived was talked against, accused, mis- 
reported, misrepresented, assailed on every hand : 
when he had gone out from the world and the 
church, we have seen saint and sinner, Jew and 
Christian, Catholic and Protestant, men of all 
classes, all ranks, all creeds, all faiths, gathering to 
do honor to his memory : because not until he died 
could they understand him. 

2. The great truths are never apprehended while 
the great teachers of those truths are living to ex- 
pound them. The death of a great teacher deepens 
and disseminates the knowledge of the truth. It 
was so with the death of Christ. It has been so with 
the death of every great teacher since Christ died. 
For the truth is always greater than the individual 
expounder of it — deeper, higher, broader, larger. 
The death of the teacher deepens the knowledge of 
the truth. While he lives multitudes of men are at- 
tracted by his own personality, by the peculiar form 
in which he puts the truth, by the amplitude of illus- 
tration, by the vehemence of utterance and strength 
of conviction, by qualities that are in himself ; and 
those qualities, while in one sense they interpret, in 
another sense they obscure, the truth. No man 
realizes this like the man who is trying to interpret a 
great truth to mankind. In him it dwells ; in him it 
burns as a fire. He seeks to fling open the doors of 
his heart that men may look in and see, not him, but 
the truth that is the power within himself ; and he is 



46 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

perplexed and humiliated and distraught ana sorrow- 
stricken that men will not see the truth, but will 
only look at him, at his words, at his figures, at his 
illustrations, at his genius, at his gestures. But when 
he has gone, and these outward interpretations and 
semblances begin to fade from their memory, that 
which they really obscured, but which they seemed to 
interpret, — or for the time did really though imper- 
fectly and obscurely interpret, — that begins to dawn 
upon them. The truth grows larger, deeper, in their 
apprehension ; they look back of the man to feel 
that the utterance was made eloquent by the truth 
within him ; that the truth was the real inspiration. 

And the death of a great leader not only deepens 
the knowledge of the truth, it disseminates that 
knowledge. The Reformation is a great deal broader 
than Luther ; and Calvinism is a great deal larger 
than John Calvin ; Methodism is immeasurably more 
than Wesley ; and, in a true sense, Christianity is 
more than Jesus of Nazareth — not more than Christ, 
but more than Jesus of Nazareth. There are some 
persons who look forward with hope to a second 
coming, in fleshly and visible presence, of Christ. 
They want to see Jesus of Nazareth descend again to 
earth, enthroned and crowned, sitting at Jerusalem. 
This would limit Christianity instead of broadening 
it, weaken instead of strengthening it, decrease in- 
stead of adding to its power. While Christ lived in 
Palestine, Christianity could not run beyond the 
bounds of his individual influence — the words he ut- 
tered, the presence he carried. It was not until he 



DEATH, THE INTERPRETER. 47 

died that the truth and the life which he inspired 
could have free course and go everywhither. Sup- 
posing he were to return there again to-day, the 
minister would wish to leave his pulpit, and the 
father and mother their children, and the business 
man his store, and the lawyer his clients, and the 
statesman his government. We should all wish to go 
flocking across the sea to Palestine to see him, and 
what would become of our duties and our work? 
Historical Christianity ! Yes, we hear much of that, 
and it is fundamental and essential. But spiritual 
Christianity runs beyond the bounds of historical 
Christianity. No great truth can be fully made 
manifest in a single narrow life ; and every indi- 
vidual life is narrow. So long as the great leader 
lives the truth is caged ; when the cage is destroyed 
has the bird liberty to fly out to carry its song every- 
whither. 

3. But, yet more than that, as truth is greater than 
the teacher, so life and spirit is greater than any 
manifestation of that life and spirit. Life is more 
than truth. It is truth vitalized. It is truth in liv- 
ing form. It is truth in action. " I am the truth," 
said Christ. He was more than the teacher of it. 
Life is more than truth, because it is truth in life. 
Now, no man, howsoever great he may be, howso- 
ever varied his attainments, howsoever wonderful his 
genius, can manifest all life, or manifest it fulh^, or 
manifest it without certain elements of limitation 
and imperfection in that manifestation. The life of 
piety is more than any man's piety. The life of love 



48 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

is more than any one love. Mother-love ? It is in- 
finitely more than the love of any one mother. Pa- 
triotism ? It is immeasurably broader than the ser- 
vice of anyone patriot. The history of the Christian 
Church is the history of the unfoldings of successive 
developments of Christian truth, Christian experi- 
ence, in and through Christian lives. If you will 
look at all beneath the surface of that history, you 
will see that it has begun in this w4se : Some one 
man has been anointed and appointed a prophet of 
God. He has been filled with a great truth, filled 
v/ith a great spirit: — a Luther filled with the doctrine 
of direct contact of the soul with God, having no 
priestly intermediary; a Calvin filled with the sense 
that there are no kings, no princes, no potentates, no 
popes, no laws, no authority anywhere but the au- 
thority and law and power that comes from the 
Almighty Sovereign, God ; a Wesley filled with the 
sense that the Gospel is not sent for the rich and 
the aristocratic, but for the colliers, the miners, 
the common people, and with a determination to 
carry it to them on every side. Now, men, in the 
first place, have not seen the truth ; they have not 
seen the spirit ; they have been simply drawn to 
the individual ; they have gathered about Luther, 
about Calvin, about Wesley ; they have been at- 
tracted to the man because they could see him — and 
most of us walk by sight and not by faith. There 
has been something in the individual that has drawn 
them to him. They have not known what it was; 
but, little by little, without their clear apprehension, 



DEATH, THE INTERPRETER, 49 

something of his truth, of his spirit, of that large 
prophetic mission which had come to him, has drifted 
into men's hearts and minds. Then suddenly he has 
been taken away. And men have begun to say in 
their tears, What shall we do ? What has become of 
our prophet ? What has become of that which was 
great and noble to us ? The day has gone ; the sun 
has set. But next they have begun to inquire, What 
made him great ? Why did we admire Luther ? Why 
did we love Wesley ? Why did we reverence our 
Calvin ? They have begun to look beneath the man 
to the spirit, beneath the teacher to the truth. And 
so the truth and the spirit of Christianity has grown 
into the church by what I may term successive In- 
carnations and successive Pentecosts. The Church 
of Christ is vastly greater than any Christian teacher. 
The combined experiences of many souls transcend 
the individual experience of the greatest and most 
saintly souls. We are beginning to believe in this 
country that the wisdom of all the people is wiser 
than the wisdom of any leader, and the virtue of all 
the people is stronger than the virtue of any leader 
and teacher. So, in the church, Christ-thought in 
the church is larger than Christ-thought in any 
teacher ; and its knowledge is greater and its voice 
more eloquent than that of any leader. All the com- 
bined experiences of divine love, all the combined 
experiences of sin and forgiveness, are more than 
any single experience, even though it were of an 
Augustine or a Paul. You never will hear again the 
story of God's love told as eloquently as you have 



50 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

heard it from this desk ; nevertheless, the story of 
God's love as an experience in all Christian hearts, 
and told by all Christian lives, is broader and larger 
than it can be when interpreted even by the most 
eloquent expounder of it : for the love of God is 
greater than the mind of man can comprehend. 

A gardener came to his garden one day and 
plucked out from it the century plant and carried it 
away, and all the flowers began to wail and say, 
'•Alas! alas! men will come here no more, or, if they 
do, they will think that spring is gone/* And the 
gardener said, *^ My children, you are mistaken: when 
the century plant was here, men came and looked, 
not at the sunlight, not at what it was doing, not at 
all to the humble growths it was bringing forth from 
the cold soil: they only looked at the century plant. 
Now it has gone, and men will come here to admire 
it no more, but they will see in the violet and in the 
rose and in the pansy and in the lady's delight and in 
the lily-of-the-valley that God's sunlight is too large 
to be drunk in by any one flower, and God's law too 
great to be manifested alone even by a century plant." 

4. And all this is truth because — and this is funda- 
mental to all I have to say this morning to you — this 
is truth because the personal presence, perpetual in- 
carnation, of Christ is greater than any localized and 
individualized incarnation. I said a few moments 
ago that Christianity was greater than Jesus of Naz- 
areth, but not greater than Christ; for we make a 
great mistake if we think we must look back across 
the chasm of eighteen centuries to find Christ, or 



DEATH, THE INTERPRETER. 5 1 

even an incarnate Christ. If there is anything clearly- 
taught in the New Testament, it is this: that incarna- 
tion is perpetual; that Christ is dwelling in humanity, 
dwelling in his Church, dwelling in all hearts and lives 
that are willing to receive him. And the Christ that 
dwells in his Church and dwells in all hearts and 
lives is greater by far than any one life — greater even 
than the life of Jesus. ^^ Greater works than these 
shall ye do," he said, ^^ because I go to my Father.** 
And the commentators have stumbled over these 
words and have been perplexed by them. But is it 
not true, that when he had preached his three years 
one little upper chamber held all the disciples that 
were faithful to his memor}^; one province, Palestine, 
about as large as the State of Vermont, was the 
whole territory he covered, he and his twelve disci- 
ples, while he lived, by his preaching? To-day they 
that gather to hear his message, and receive the 
touch of his spirit as it beats in human hearts and 
trembles on human lips, are uncounted, they are un- 
numbered thousands. He healed a few scores, a few 
hundreds, by the touch of his hand and the word of 
his voice. Who shall take the census of all those 
who have known the gift and blessing of healing in 
Christian hospitals and the Christian science of med- 
icine since he died ? The pages of history are radiant 
with the works which Christ has wrought since the 
death of Jesus. " The church,'* he says, ** is my body.'* 
It is a dwarfed body, a deformed body, a body grow- 
ing through all various imperfections to what is to be 
the final perfection. But it is //^body. He dwells 



52 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

in it; and the body is more than any finger, any hand, 
any single organ. The director of an orchestra 
knows every instrument in it, perhaps, better than 
any one performer. If the orchestra plays ill, he 
steps from the platform and takes the violin out of 
one of the performers' hands and plays perfectly the 
theme which the orchestra is to render; then he gives 
it back, goes to his place, raises his rod in hand, and 
calls for the rendition, and the orchestra breaks forth 
into the symphony. They are ill trained; some of 
their instruments are out of tune; some of them are 
ignorant; they are imperfect; but they are working 
together under the trainer and leader to render from 
a hundred instruments what he rendered in one 
single melody upon one. And when his work is 
done, when he has trained them as he would train 
them, when he has put his own spirit, his own love, 
his own musical thought, into their thoughts and 
their minds, there will rise from that orchestra a 
grander interpretation of the theme than the single 
instrument in the hands of the greatest genius could 
possibly give it. So Christ came to earth, and for 
one brief moment played the theme of God's love; 
and so, from time to time, he calls from his or- 
chestra, here one, there one, to render on a single in- 
strument the theme that he would have us all learn. 
With instruments out of tune and with minds that 
do not comprehend, with hearts imperfectly trained 
and understandings imperfectly furnished, we are all 
trying to render the great theme that he has given 
to us. When he has wrought his training and ac- 



DEATH, THE INTERPRETER, 53 

complished it, from the great orchestra that he gath- 
ers about his throne there will rise a better inter- 
pretation of God's love to man, and man's love to 
God, than any man, than even Jesus of Nazareth 
himself, could, with a single life and single lips, in- 
terpret. 

If I have carried you along with my thought at all 
this morning, I need hardly make any application of 
it. If the world does not learn from those of us that 
remain on earth that ^^ God is love," better even than 
it learned that lesson from him v/ho has gone, it will 
be our f^ult. Though no one life can so interpret it, 
though no one voice can so utter it, if from our 
mingled lives and our mingled voices there is not a 
broader, deeper, better, larger interpretation than 
any one voice and any one life can give, it will be be- 
cause we have not learned the lesson God was teach- 
ing us. And your own personal lesson, your own 
personal question, members of Plymouth Church, 
what is it? Not, first, what you are to do for Christ, 
but what Christ is to do for you; not, first, what you 
are to give or what accomplish, but how you can 
fling your hearts open to receive the personal touch 
of the personal Christ. You know better than I can 
tell you how impatient your pastor was at times of 
human adulation, and how he sought to turn away 
the praise and love that was given to himself, and 
transfer it to the One he loved and the cause he 
loved. This is what I have sought to do this morn- 
ing: — to ask you, not in any wise to forget, not in 
any wise to fail to keep the sacred memory fresh and 



54 S/G.VS OF PROMISE. 

green, but to look behind the individual to the truth 
and the spirit and the Christ that was in him. I 
seek to transfer your allegiance from the man to the 
cause, to the truth, to the God, to whom he gave his 
life's allegiance. 

Some years ago I was with my boy walking the 
streets of New York. I was at that time pastor of a 
church there. As we came by it, he asked, "Is this 
your church, papa?" and I said, " Yes." When we 
walked along out toward the square, he pointed to 
another church, and he said, " Whose church is that ?'* 
"Dr. Hastings's church." "Whose church is that?" 
"Mr. Frothingham's church." "Where is God's 
church, papa ?" That question has stayed with me 
ever since — " Where is God's church ?" If this be, as 
I believe it is, God's church, the church of Christ, the 
church of the Living God, seek first of all to make 
real to yourselves the truths that you have learned 
here, and incarnate in yourselves the spirit you have 
seen here, and live in your hearts' experiences the 
Christ and God that has been taught you here. So 
shall you prove by your own experience that the 
church of Christ is more than even the greatest Chris- 
tian teachers. May God bring that lesson to you and 
work that life in you ! Amen. 



in. 

THE NECESSITY OF PROGRESS. 

** Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but one thing 
I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching for- 
ward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal, 
unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." — Phil. iii. 
13, 14 (alt.). 

A GREAT many sermons have been preached from 
this text, "One thing I do,** on the necessity of con- 
centration of effort and energy in life. The lesson is 
an excellent one, bat it is not contained in the text. 
If you will look at either the old or the new version, 
you will see that the words " I do *' are printed in 
italics. They are not in the original. What Paul 
says is this: *^ I have begun a Christian life. I do 
not count myself to have yet succeeded; but there is 
one thing: I am trying to succeed.'* The lesson in 
this text is not concentration of effort. It is> progress. 

I propose to speak to you this morning and next 
Sabbath morning on Progress in the Religious Life: 
this Sabbath morning on the duty, indeed on the in- 
exorable necessity of it, and next Sabbath morning 
on the laws which govern it; in both, seeking simply 
to set before you the principles which Paul incul- 
cates. 



Plymouth Church, January 8, 1888. 

55. 



56 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

Naturalism regards all religion as simply a growth. 
Christian faith regards it as primarily and in its in- 
ception a gift. Naturalism regards all religious faith 
and all organization of religious life, whether in 
individual manifestations or in organic manifesta- 
tions, as a tov/er of Babel which men have builded 
that they may climb up toward heaven. Christian 
faith regards it all as the New Jerusalem let down 
from heaven among m.en. Accordingly, Christians 
have not unnaturally fallen into antagonism toward 
the idea of growth in religion. They have come to 
identify religious growth with the philosophy of 
naturalism, and to imagine that whoever stands for 
progress in religious doctrine, religious institutions, 
and religious life, is really a representative of the 
philosophy that religion is a product of human 
endeavor, not a divine bestowm.ent. 

No! religion is not a product of mere human en- 
deavor. The church is not something which man 
has himself constructed, nor theology something 
which man has himself evolved, nor the spiritual life 
something which man has v/rought out of himself. 
It is all God-given. But what God has given is life, 
not the product of the life directly. What God has 
given has been, in every instance, the seed out of 
which the life in all its various forms has grown, 
"The kingdom of heaven," says Christ, " is like a 
seed planted in the ground." The seed is planted 
by God; to the seed God gives the life; but it is only 
a seed which he has planted — a seed which would 
have in it no power w^hatever to produce anything if 



THE NECESSITY OF PROGRESS. 57 

there were not a God-given life within it. But that 
seed, once planted in human soil, in human thought, 
in human life, has wrought out of the human life, 
out of the human soil, out of the human mind, the 
whole process of religion in its intellectual forms, in 
its- institutional forms, in its spiritual forms. Religion 
is an evolution, religion is a growth; but it is an evolu- 
tion and a growth from that which has been divinely 
imparted in the outset. The moment religion ceases 
to grow, it ceases to be; for religion is life, and ail life 
is growth. 

In the first place, then, history abundantly demon- 
strates that theology has been a progressive science. 
Theology was not framed and formulated in the be- 
ginning, and handed over to man perfected, as a 
boat might be built by a boat-builder and then given 
over to the man to sail in. There is no perfected 
creed in the Old Testament, no perfected system of 
theology in the New Testament, that stands, with no 
new growth in it, all through the Bible and all 
through subsequent time. On the contrary, from 
the days of Moses down to the present time, theology 
has been a succession of growths. It has come into 
its present condition by successive accretions. We 
car. hardly realize to-day the mental state of men 
who supposed that there was a God for every prov- 
ince, every town, every city, and even every house- 
hold; who supposed that there were as many gods as 
there were nations, as many gods as there were tribes. 
But that was the common conception of humanity in 
its earlier stages, and the first declaration which you 



58 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

will find in the Old Testament is that the God of 
the Jews is superior to all the other gods. He is 
God of gods, Lord of lords. ** There is no god like 
unto thee." This is the first declaration, for this is 
all men could comprehend. The notion that there 
were not a multiplicity of deities could not have been 
hammered into the human mind, to begin with. And 
then there gradually grows out of this the larger 
truth that there is only one God, and all the gods of 
the heathen are but idols, imaginary gods, with no 
reality to them. Then there is further wrought out 
the truth that this God is a God of justice; that he 
is not a mere nature-god; that he is not mere blind 
force, like the gods of the pagans round about; that 
he is a God with moral sentiments, who can be ap- 
pealed to, and that he acts according to principles of 
right and wrong. And after this comes the higher 
doctrine that God is a God of love and of redeeming 
mercy, that he is a pardoning God. *^ Who is a God 
like unto thee, that forgiveth iniquity ?" And finally 
this conception of God blossoms out into its full 
revelation in the Lord Jesus Christ, a revelation that 
is not made until, in the language of Paul, *^ the full- 
ness of time" has come. 

And yet theology, the doctrine of God, does not 
come to an end even then. Then the church begins 
to study Christ. The disciples did not understand 
what he was. They did not comprehend his nature. 
First there come four centuries of debate about the 
person of Christ, between Arianism and Athanasian- 
ism — battlings, many of which seem to us in our time 



THE NECESSITY OF PROGRESS. 59 

foolish and idle and puerile, but out of which there 
grows the conception which at last has reached its 
completion; and the Christian church everywhere to- 
day recognizes that Jesus Christ is the manifestation 
and the incarnation of God. And then there begins 
a further battle as to the nature of man — who he 
is, what sort of a being he is; and at last there is 
wrought out the doctrine now universally accepted 
in the Christian church, that man is sinful, that he 
has departed from God, that there is a great gulf 
between man and God, that he is not merely an im- 
perfectly developed norm of humanity, but that he is 
sinful and guilty, needing forgiveness and restora- 
tion to divine favor. Then there comes the epoch 
introduced by the Reformation — the question, How 
shall this sinful man be brought into fellowship with 
this just, righteous, holy, loving God ? — a question 
that could not have been discussed in the days of 
Moses, could not have been discussed in the days of 
David, could scarcely have been discussed with any 
fullness in the days of Paul. And out of that dis- 
cussion there grows the doctrine of justification by 
faith, — that this God of justice and righteousness 
and holiness is ready to receive every man without 
being bought, without being entreated and wrought 
upon. 

And when at last this noble doctrine of a God thus 
ready to give his love to whoever will take it has 
been fairly wrought into the experience of the 
church, then and not till then begins the great mis- 
sionary age. Wesley introduced it ; the Moravians 



6o S/GJVS OF PROMISE. 

carried it further. At last the missionary life was 
brought into every church and into every nation, 
and we are living in that missionary age to-day, — an 
age t?ie preparation and foundation of which had 
been laid through all the centuries that preceded. 

Men scoff at " new theology" as though it were 
something new in the world to have new theology. 
Why, theology has always been new. There never has 
been a time in the history of the church when theol- 
ogy has not been new. The theology of Moses was 
new to the people that he led out of Egypt, and they 
said, "Who is this God ?" And he had to tell them. 
It was news. The theology of David was new to the 
children of Israel when he built the Temple for them. 
The theology of the Exile was new w^hen it was de- 
clared by Isaiah. The theology of Paul was so new 
that the Christian church could hardly dare to have 
it preached. The theology of Calvin was so new in 
his time that men persecuted him and hounded him 
for it. The theology of Wesley was so new that all 
the Church of England broke out into derisive laugh- 
ter. The theology of Edwards was new, and he w^as 
driven from his church at Northampton for preach- 
ing it. The theology of Finney was so new that the 
religious newspapers bombarded him with a bombard- 
ment worse than Plymouth pulpit ever received. The 
theology of Lyman Beecher was so new that he was 
put on trial in Cincinnati for preaching it. There 
never has been a time in all history when the great 
prophets and luminaries of the church were not 
preaching a new theology. Religious truth has 



THE NECESSITY OF PROGRESS. 6 1 

grown in the church as vines grow, and when the 
vine ceases to put out new wood it is a dead vine. 

And we have not come to the end yet. The his- 
tory of the Christian church has been this, in succes- 
sive stages: a prophet arising with a great truth born 
in his soul, and giving it forth; his disciples taking 
that truth, stripping it of its life, turning it into a 
mere skeleton of a system, articulating it, and hold- 
ing it up and imagining they held the living thing 
because they held the articulated system. I think if 
Bushnell could rise from his grave to-day, the first 
thing he would denounce would be Bushnellism; and 
you know that Henry Ward Beecher abhorred Beecher- 
ism worse than Calvinism. Take the corpse, draw all 
the blood out of its veins, infuse in the place of that 
living blood the chemical preparation that shall pre- 
serve it from decay, and it is a mummy. And all 
mummies are alike, whether a mummified theology 
that came from Rome or a mummified theology that 
comes from Andover or Oberlin. If it is mummified, 
it is dead. 

It is equally true that all ethical life is a growth. 
The great laws of right and wrong, it may be said 
with truth, do not change. No! the great laws of 
right and wrong do not change. Nevertheless, the 
standards of ethics change from age to age ; they 
change in their actuality and they change in the ap- 
plication which is to be made of them to changing 
circumstances. There is not one and the same stand- 
ard of right and wrong for the Bushman in Africa 
and for the civilized American in New York or 



62 S/GJVS OF PROMISE. 

Brooklyn. The ideals of right are historically pro- 
gressive. The world has moved by successive stages 
to higher and higher conceptions of social and politi- 
cal morality. The communal regulations that should 
bind together the community in fraternal fellowship 
have been modified from epoch to epoch and from age 
to age. The Old Testament allow^ed polygamy ; it 
allowed free divorce; it allowed slavery; and men liv- 
ing in the nineteenth century have gone back to that 
and have said : ^* See ! the Old Testament allowed 
polygamy, therefore we may have it in Utah ; the Old 
Testament allowed slavery, therefore we may have it 
in South Carolina ; the Old Testament allowed free 
divorce, therefore we may have it in Indiana." But 
the moral life of the nations has changed. The 
Bible allows to men in a low^-down condition that 
which is not admissible to them when they rise into 
a higher one ; just as you will permit your children 
to do some things that you will not do yourselves if 
you are wise parents. My father said to me when I 
first went into the ministry (and the advice has been 
of great service to me ever since), " It is a law of 
mechanics that nothing can be taken from one 
position to another position without being carried 
through all the intermediate positions. This is 
equally true in morals," he said. " If you preach to 
a congregation that is at one point, and you want to 
get them to another point, content yourself with 
taking them one step at a time." This is true in the 
moral history of the world and in God's dealing with 
humanity. He has taken humanity one step at a 



THE NECESSITY OF PROGRESS. 63 

time. The Ten Commandments afford no ideal of 
life for the Christian in the nineteenth century. In 
the first place they are all of them, with one excep- 
tion, negatives : ** Thou shalt not steal ; thou shalt 
not commit adultery ; thou shalt not kill." Is that 
the ideal of human life ? We come on through the 
ages, and we come to the Sermon on the Mount. 
Christ shows a new law, a deeper one : ** It has been 
said by them of old time, so and so ; I say unto you, 
thus and so." Still, even the Sermon on the Mount 
is largely a law of negations. " Thou shalt not kill ? 
No, that is not enough ; — thou shalt not be angry ! 
Thou shalt not bear false witness ? No ; thou shalt not 
forswear thyself !" But Jesus has not reached the 
culmination of his ideal, then. Not until the close of 
his ministry does he say, ** Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength, 
and thy neighbor as thyself ;" and not until just as 
he is bidding adieu to his disciples forever does he 
say, ** A new commandment give I unto you, that ye 
love one another as I have loved you." There is a 
gulf as wide as 4000 years between the mere nega- 
tives of the Ten Commandments and that ideal flung 
out before humanity, *^ Love one another as I have 
loved you." The man that merely obeys the Ten 
Commandments is at best a reputable Jew, and the 
man that merely obeys the prohibitions of the Ser- 
mon on the Mount is merely a half-Christianized 
Jew. The man is not a Christian until he has taken 
Christ as his standard and said to himself, ^^ I will 
love, God helping me, as Christ loved." But even as 



64 S/GJVS OF PROMISE. 

a series of prohibitions the Ten Commandments is 
not an adequate standard for to-day. There is no 
law in the Bible against gambling ; is gambling 
right ? There is no law in the Bible against forgery ; 
is forgery right ? Changed conditions create a neces- 
sity for new standards and new laws. Even were 
the laws adequate, the applications would be varied. 
There is no better law of life than the law of love ; 
there is no better rule of life than the Golden Rule. 
But the Golden Rule in the nineteenth century 
means something different from that which it meant 
in the first century. When a man has a thousand 
people working under him, whose very names he 
cannot know, how shall he apply the law of love in 
the workshop ? He must find a way. The ethical 
questions of to-day are not the ethical questions of 
yesterday. The labor question of to-day is not the 
labor question of yesterday. Thirty or forty years 
ago the labor question v/as this : Shall the laborer 
own himself ? Shall he have any wages ? Shall he 
have a right to his home ? Shall he have a right to 
his household ? Shall he have a right to his personal 
liberty ? Shall he have a right to his own man- 
hood and free education ? Shall he have a right to 
learn to read the Bible ? This was the question that 
Slavery, which v/as the labor question of fifty years 
ago, presented. There is no difficulty now about 
that question. We could all see, if we were not 
blinded by prejudice and self-interest, that slavery 
was a monstrous crime against God and against 
man. But to-day, with organized labor on the one 



THE NECESSITY OF PROGRESS, 65 

hand, arming itself, and often guilty of violence, and 
with not a little of corruption going forth from con- 
centrated wealth on the other ; with selfishness on 
the one side and selfishness on the other; with virtue 
on the one side and virtue on the other, — the labor 
question is far more complicated and far more diffi- 
cult. And our future lies before us,— not behind 
us. Any one can be an anti-slavery man now. It 
does not take much courage to kick a dead lion. 
But to take the law of love, to take the law " Do unto 
others as you would have others do unto you" and 
apply it to all the complicated relations of the indus- 
trial situation in America to-day, on one side the 
line and on the other side the line, in the one camp 
and in the other, in the counting-room and the office, 
and at the forge and in the machine-shop — that is a 
very different matter, and a very difficult matter. 
However, we are not worthy of our fathers if we do 
not take hold of the problems of to-day and deal with 
them. 

This duty of progress is equally applicable to 
church work and church life. As theology, or the 
science of religion, as ethics, or the social practice of 
religion, have been successive developments, as the 
standards of truth have changed from epoch to 
epoch, and the standards of action have changed 
from epoch to epoch, and the applications of truth 
have changed in changing circumstances and condi- 
tions, so also is it necessarily true that the life of the 
church has changed. The church of to-day cannot 
be, must not be, the church of yesterday. It must 



66 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

not be, or it will not fulfill its duty. It cannot be, 
for if it is not growing it is decaying. No church 
can live on its past history, however resplendent that 
history may be. No church can take the methods 
admirably adapted to yesterday and employ them 
to-day without considering the question whether 
the methods of yesterday are adapted to to-day. 
Can any one familiar with the history of the Middle 
Ages doubt that the monastery was a magnificent in- 
stitution in those centuries ? It put the aegis of the 
cross over the only places of quiet thought and liter- 
ary pursuit. It put the only protection which was 
counted for anything in that wild, savage, but hap- 
pily superstitious age, over the treasures that have 
come down to us from a remote past. If it had not 
been for the monasteries and the libraries which 
they guarded, we should have no Virgil, no Homer, 
no Plato — no, not even the manuscript copies of the 
Bible. Can any man familiar with history doubt 
the service that the preaching friars rendered to 
England and to all Northern Europe ? Can any man 
who has considered this past record doubt the moral 
power that went forth from the Church of Rome — 
ay, and from the Bishop of Rome — restraining men 
in their passions, and gathering out from them an 
elect few to something nobler in life than putting 
their one hand on men's throats and another hand in 
their pockets ? for that w^as war, all through the 
Middle Ages — brigandage. The trouble with the 
monastery and the nunnery and the priory is that 
they have outlived their time. They continue when 



THE NECESSITY OF PROGRESS. 6/ 

the age has no longer service for them. They were 
magnificent; they are antiquated: like the great 
castles on the Rhine, constructed for a different time 
— picturesque monuments of an age that, thank God, 
is forever swept into the past. 

O yes, you all agree with that, because I am talk- 
ing of Roman Catholic institutions. But it is ex- 
actly as true that a Protestant method which did for jJ 
yesterday may not do for to-day. A hundred years I 
ago we were a homogeneous people in this country, % 
for the most part a Christian people. Our churches 
were gatherings of Christian households. The main j^ 
problem of the church was how to nurture and pro- ' 
tect and guard and strengthen its own spiritual life. 
The whole atmosphere, the whole condition of 
American life has changed. God has brought over 
from foreign shores great hordes of half-civilized 
and half-heathenized population. They lie at our 
very door. They live side by side with us. We 
brush against them in the horse-cars, on the streets, 
— everywhere except in our churches. The church 
of the latter half of the nineteenth century must be 
a missionary church or it is not a church at all. It 
must accept as its problem this : how it shall take 
the flaming light of God's love, as shown forth in the 
cross of Christ, and carry that gospel to the men 
that do not know it. And we are not solving that 
problem to-day. We are only just beginning to 
solve it. No matter what the congregation is in 
size, no matter what the wealth of its treasury, no 
matter what its culture and refinement, almost no 



68 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

matter what it gives in contribution-boxes to heathen 
abroad or heathen at home ; if the church has no 
hand-grasp for the poor, if it sheds no light upon 
the unchurched, if it is not, in some form or other, 
by some activity or other, laying hold of the great 
populations that God has brought to our shores that 
we may lay hold of them, it is not the living church 
of God and of his Christ. 

As methods of church work must change, so the 
spiritual life and experience of the church neces- 
sarily changes from time to time, from age to age. 
Our hymn-books are the best exponent of church 
spiritual experience. When Plymouth Church Col- 
lection was made, thirty odd years ago, it was far in 
advance of the average church life of America at 
that time. Some of you will remember how sharply 
it was criticised because it ventured to put in some 
hymns of the Roman Catholic Faber, some hymns of 
Unitarian authorship, some hymns of the not-Chris- 
tian Moore. Thirty years have passed, and there is 
not, I venture to say, a hymn-book which has been 
published within the last five years that has not in 
it more Unitarian and more of Faber's hymns than 
Plymouth Church Collection has. Fifty years of 
Christian preaching has wrought a great change in 
Christian experience. Such hymns as Whittier*s 
"Eternal Goodness," such hymns as that of Faber's, 

'• There's a wideness in God's mercy, 
Like the wideness of the sea, 
And a kindness in his justice 
That is more than liberty," 



THE NECESSITY OF PROGRESS. 6g 

could not have been written if Maurice and Robert- 
son and Cardinal Newman and Bushnell and Henry 
Ward Beecher had not preached. The bird cannot 
sing till it is hatched. The spiritual experience of 
the church has grown, ripened, widened. It is 
better to-day than it was yesterday, and it will be 
better to-morrow than it is to-day. 

And this truth of progress in theology, in ethics, in 
church life and work, all grows out of the one fun- 
damental truth that religion as a personal experi- 
ence is a growth. Let me go back to our text. 
Paul, in this third chapter of Philippians, gives us a 
bit of autobiography. He describes himself, first, 
as a Jew ; and as a Jew, he says, "I was perfect. I 
lived according to the law ; I was blameless.** Ju- 
daism — at least Pharisaic Judaism — was not a pro- 
gressive and advancing life. It was stereotyped. 
" I lived," he says, ^^ according to the Pharisaic law, 
and I was blameless. But while I was so living 
there dawned upon me suddenly a conception of a 
new life. Christ came my way, touched me on the 
shoulder, beckoned me to follow him as he beckoned 
that tax-gatherer. I rose up to follow him. But 
now my whole conception of life has been changed. 
I no longer count myself perfect, no longer regard 
myself as blameless, no longer think I have appre- 
hended. I follow after, if that I may apprehend that 
for which I am apprehended. The ideal of life is 
forever a disappearing and vanishing ideal. It for- 
ever eludes me. I pursue it, and it still goes on be- 
fore." And then he comes to our text. Now I will 



^0 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

read it, not in the words of either the old version or 
the new version, but in my own paraphrase (if you 
please) : " Brethren, I count myself not yet to have 
apprehended ; but there is one thing — paying no at- 
tention to the things that are behind, and stretching 
forward to the things which are before — I press on 
toward the distant goal, for the prize of God's call- 
ing in Christ Jesus. Higher! higher!" This is what 
Paul said. Every attainment I make in Christian 
life, every victory I win, every result I have achieved, 
is but the call of God to me to go on, on, on ! Al- 
ways something beyond. In the mountain I am 
climbing there is no topmost peak. Reach up as 
high as I will, still the Mont Blanc rises higher, yet 
higher. Is it not always so with love ? Do we any of 
us know the one we love ? Does any child that bows 
in reverence before his mother know the length and 
breadth, the height and depth of a mother-love? Is 
there any husband that loves and reveres his wife 
with increasing love and increasing reverence as the 
years go on, that knows the fullness of his wife's na- 
ture ? And do we know Christ ? Perfect Christians ! 
I set before you, then, to-day Paul's ideal and 
God's call. Whatever victories may have been won 
(and they have been grand ones) in the theology of 
the past, God's voice says, " Higher ! higher !" 
Whatever ethical standard of righteousness has been 
wrought in the community, God's voice says, 
" Higher ! higher !" Whatever spiritual attainment 
has been wrought in the church, God's voice to this 
church, to every church, is still ** Higher ! higher !" 



THE NECESSITY OF PROGRESS, 7 1 

Whatever you have achieved in yourself, in victory 
over your passion, over your appetite, over your 
pride, over your lower nature, God says, " There is 
no time to sit down and recount the victories that 
are past — no time to write bulletins. Go higher, — 
higher !*' And this Voice that calls us higher, 
is not like that voice which leads him who follows 
it only to perish on the mountain-peak amid snow 
and ice, while above the sun of glory shines and be- 
low the pastures feed the flocks with their verdure. 
This Voice calls us higher, yet higher, as the sun 
calls the lark, whose song drops down to earth from 
his winged flight, and the end of the ascending is 
the bosom of our God: — 



IV. 
THE LAW OF PROGRESS. 

** That we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and car- 
ried about by every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in 
craftiness, after the wiles of error; but, speaking truth in love, may 
grow up in all things into him which is the head, even Christ; 
from whom all the body, fitly framed and knit together through that 
which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due meas- 
ure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the 
building up of itself in love." — Ephesians iv. 14, 15, 16. 

In this text Paul distinguishes between two things 
which are often confounded — movement and growth. 
All growth involves movement, but there is a great 
deal of movement which has in it no growth. Let 
me read the text again, with a little interpretation. 

Paul here, as very commonly, speaks in metaphori- 
cal language, and it is not easy to translate metaphor 
from one language into another, for in the transla- 
tion something of the meaning is obscured, or liable 
to be obscured, or lost. Thus the phrase, *^ the sleight 
of men," is literally ^^ the dice-throwing of men," 
and by that he may mean cunning craftiness, or he 
may refer to mere chance or hap-hazard — I am in- 
clined to think the latter. 

"That we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and 
carried about by every wind of doctrine, as by the dice- 
Plymouth Church, Sunday morning, January 15, 1888. 

72 



THE LA W OF PROGRESS, 73 

throwing of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of wandering 
[for that is the literal meaning of ^rrf?r]; but, speaking the 
truth in love, may grow up in all things into him which is 
the head, even Christ ; from whom all the body, fitly framed 
and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, 
according to the working in due measure of each several 
part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up 
of itself in love." 

Movement, mere movement, is sporadic, individual; 
it starts nowhere and goes nowhither; it has no rela- 
tion to that which has preceded, and it has no rela-. 
tion to that which is to come; the man of mere move- 
ment is like a wisp of straw, that is blown about by 
every wind of doctrine. Such men are common 
enough in all times. They are especially common in 
our time; they are full of new-fangled notions; they 
are ready to propose to you a scheme that will settle 
all social difficulties out of hand; they are ready to 
do it without knowing out of what those social diffi- 
culties have grown, or towards what we should seek 
to direct ourselves. They come forward with some 
political measure that will solve all difficulties instant- 
ly; they are ready to rub from the slate of thought all 
that man wrote on it in times past, and begin on it 
afresh, — men who change their opinions as readily as 
women change their bonnets, and who, indeed, have 
the same notion of religion that the ladies have of 
fashion, — they do not wish to wear anything that is 
too commonly worn ; they do not like to believe what 
other folks believe ; they have a mania for some- 
thing that is original. You have seen playing on the 



74 s/GjVs of promise. 

water, in summer days, the little insect skippers that 
go back and forth, hither and yon, and yet never 
seem to accomplish anything or reach any journey's 
end. Politics, and to some extent theology, has its 
skippers, who are dashing to and fro, without ever 
making real progress or ever coming to any definite 
end. 

Over against these, on the other hand, are men 
that are opposed to all movement; men that are an- 
chored wholly to the past; men that stand on the 
deck of the Nineteenth Century, but always on the 
stern of the deck, with their back to the bow and 
their face looking toward the receding shore; men 
who always think that the noble is in the past, and 
never think that there is any ideal in the future; men 
who say in respect to every movment of theology, 
every miovement in politics, every movement of 
thought anywhere, " Be careful how you cut loose 
from your moorings,*' — as though a ship that never 
cut loose from its moorings could accomplish any- 
thing, — as though ships were not made to be cut 
loose from their moorings and sail out to sea and go 
somewhere and do something; men that are brake- 
men: and very useful are brakemen, but they must 
not keep the brakes on all the time. These are the 
reactionaries. The reactionary reveres only the past: 
the revolutionist is oblivious of the past and has only 
an expectation of something, he knows scarcely what, 
in the future. The first class would almost revere 
the Devil, because his age makes him respectable; 
and the second class is almost weary of God him- 



THE LA W OF PROGRESS. 75 

self, because he is declared to have existed from all 
Eternity. 

Now over against these two, the reactionaries on 
the one side and the revolutionists on the other, there 
stands, as interpreted and implied in our text, the 
conception of social progress as of a movement, but 
a movement that is growth; movement that begins 
somewhere and proceeds by a regular process of se- 
quence to a result more or less clearly perceived; 
movement which is interpreted to us by that modern 
word "evolution," which, speaking in a broad way, 
is the doctrine that every successive stage of life has 
proceeded from a previous and inferior stage of life 
and is going on to a consequent and superior stage 
of life. Evolution is the doctrine of conservatism ap- 
plied to growth; it is also the doctrine of growth 
applied to conservatism. It is the doctrine that there 
is no growth that has not a root in the past and 
a promise in the future; that all true movement 
proceeds by this method of antecedent and con- 
sequent, the consequent growing always out of the 
antecedent. Movement is a mere going hither and 
yon: growth is an organic development that holds 
fast to the past and presses forward to the future. 
Movement simply proves all things: reactionism 
simply holds fast that which is past: progress holds 
fast that which is good in the past, and proves all 
things, that it may press forward to that which is 
better in the future. 

Paul, in our text, applies to the Christian life this 
simple distinction between movement and growth. I 



76 SIGA'S OF PROMISE. 

shall make no attempt this morning to apply it other- 
wise than to Christian life, though I think you may 
take this simple principle and apply it to almost all 
movements. If a man comes to you with a business 
enterprise which cuts loose from all the experience of 
the past, you may safely bow him out of your office 
w^ithout further inquiry; if he comes to you with a 
labor solution that cuts loose from all the experience 
of the past, you need not so much as look at his 
proposition; if he comes to you with a proposition in 
theology which cuts loose from all the experience of 
the past, it is not worth your slightest consideration. 
Nothing is progress that has not in it a root in the 
past and a blossom in the future. 

Paul further says in our text that the centre around 
which, the root from which, the ideal toward which, 
all religious progress is made, is Christ. Progress, 
he says, comes from Christ, we grow from him; prog- 
ress is carried on by successive supplies from Christ 
as the vital force; through every joint of supply this 
force of Christ is working; and Christ is the ideal 
into which at last we are to grow. Let us take this 
measure of Paul's, as interpreted by other passages 
in his writings, and consider it as a law of religious 
progress. 

The Old Testament, then, was not, as men have 
sometimes imagined, and as men sometimes now im- 
agine, a sudden disclosure of something that the 
world never had imagined or thought of before. The 
religion of the Old Testament was not made and 
completed in heaven and then handed down as a fin- 



THE LA V/ OF PROGRESS. 77 

ished product upon the earth; on the contrary, the 
Old Testament itself grew out of that which had an- 
ticipated and preceded the Old Testament. The 
Bible did not make religion; religion anticipated and 
made the Bible. Men hearing the whispering voice 
of God in their own consciences and not well under- 
standing it, yet feeling in themselves some need of 
spiritual development and culture, in the midst of 
their busy life sought for a holy day long before the 
Sabbath was ordained. Hearing that whispering 
voice of God, they recognized in themselves separa- 
tion from him, and they desired to find some way of 
bridging the gap between himself and them, and 
offered holy sacrifices long before the Levitical code 
was given. Desiring to consecrate themselves anew 
to the service of this God and profess their faith in 
him, they devised circumcision long before the rite 
had been prescribed to Abraham. Listening for this 
whispering voice of God, they thought they heard 
messages from the eternal world long before Joseph 
dreamed his dream or Daniel offered prayer to God. 
Then the prophets of the Old Testament time took 
up these fragments of religious life, these gropings 
after God, and gathered them together and unified 
them and made of them a rounded and perfected 
whole. 

The first appearances which God made to man 
were through human experiences, not recognized as 
divine in the first appearing of them. God gradu- 
ally dawned upon the human race, as though he 
feared that, if he came too suddenly, he should 



78 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

afford his children too great a surprise. So, lit- 
tle by little, through long centuries, the Old Tes- 
tament revelation of God grew up, the revelation of 
God as a Father, the revelation of communion be- 
tween God and his children, the revelation of prayer 
to him and answer from him. Men in our time pro- 
pose to cut off the Old Testament and begin with 
the New. Men might as well disown the cradle that 
rocked them. You might as well say, We will begin 
history with the Magna Charta and forget Alfred 
the Great. You might as well forget the Colonial 
Charters, the American Revolution and the Declara- 
tion of Independence, and say. We will begin our 
national history with the surrender at Appomattox 
Court-house. 

"In the fullness of time," says the Apostle Paul, 
"came Jesus Christ." Before that time God had at 
various times and in sundry places revealed himself; 
but when the fullness of time had come, then came 
Jesus Christ, His Son. When the human race, at 
least the Jewish race, had become accustomed to the 
thought of God as a sympathetic, spiritual being, — 
a notion hardly even suggested in any religion but 
the Jewish, — then God entered into human life and 
showed himself in human form. God veiled him- 
self that he might be present among men. He that 
was the Truth came speaking, he that was the Di- 
vine Power came working miracles, and he that was 
Infinite Love came crowned with suffering. He could 
not have been the Truth and not been a speaking 
Christ; he could not have been the Divine Person- 



THE LA W OF PROGRESS. 79 

ality and the sparks and illumination of power not 
flow from his person; he could not have been the 
Infinite Love and not have known Calvary and Geth- 
semane. 

There are men and movements in our own time 
that propose to sever all religious life from its 
cradle in Christ ; men who say, * The teaching of 
Christ is enough for me. What is it to me whether 
Christ fed five thousand in the wilderness or not ? I 
look about me and I see Christian philanthropy feed- 
ing five times five thousand. That is enough for me. 
What is it to me whether Christ put his hand on the 
leper and the leper was healed by his touch ? I see 
all about me hospitals in which healing is carried on 
in much grander scale. That is enough for me. 
What is it to me whether at the voice of God angels 
rolled away the stone and Christ came forth trium- 
phant over death ? It is enough for me that there is 
no Christian grave out of which the flowers of a 
blessed hope do not grow. Let the past be past, 
Christianity is present; let us live in that.* But as 
the Old Testament grew out of seeds of God in hu- 
man souls planted before the days of the prophets, 
and as in time the New Testament grew out of the 
old dispensation, so all the blessed Christianity in 
the midst of which we live grew out of the manger 
and Out of the cross. This attempt to sever vital 
from historical Christianity is as if one should say in 
June, of the roses on the vine, " They are enough for 
me; tell me not of the seeds that were phinted in 
April or May, and germinated and broke their shells 



80 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

and worked their way through the earth in season. 
I care nothing for that, it is enough for me to believe 
in the rose of to-day and rejoice in it." Neverthe- 
less, you would have no rose in June if there had 
been no cutting planted in April or in May. 

A man coming in from the Atlantic Ocean wakes 
in the morning and finds himself on the South Amer- 
ican coast, standing by the side of the captain of the 
vessel, who says to him, " We are now in the Amazon;*' 
and he, on looking about on every side, says, *' I see no 
shore on that side and I see no shore on the other 
side; I do not believe we are in the river.'* The cap- 
tain says, " No : the river is so broad, you cannot 
see the shore on either side ; but we are in the river 
that has come thousands of miles down from the An- 
des." He answers, " You can tell that to those who 
believe it. I do not." By and by he gets a sight of 
the shore and he says, ** Well, I see we are in the 
river; but as to this notion that this river comes 
thousands of miles down from a little spring in the 
Andes — you cannot make me believe that." And 
so men to-day live in this great broad stream of 
Christian love and hope which, whether they believe 
it or not, was cradled in the hills of Judea. What- 
ever in thought proposes to separate the Christian 
life of to-day from the manger of Christ is move- 
ment, not progress. It cuts off faith and religious 
life from that which is its source and inspiration, and 
in fact its very beginning. Thank God, it cannot be 
done, for the long river of Christianity has been flow- 



THE LAW OF PROGRESS. 8 1 

ing down through the ages with broadening current, 
until this day. 

Christ was here but a few years, and when he was 
to go away he bade his disciples farewell; and there 
are a great many persons in the Christian church 
who think that Christianity then came to an end. 
They read the life of Christ up to the crucifixion and 
then stop. The difference between rationalism and 
Christianit}'" is this: rationalism stops at the grave, 
faith goes on to the Ascension. Departing from his 
disciples, Christ left them promises, reiterated prom- 
ises. *^ Lo,'* he said, " I am with you always, even 
unto the end of the world.'* ^' I will not leave you 
alone; I will dwell in your hearts, I will dwell in 
your lives." The disciples did not understand it, and 
they did not believe it, and yet, after he had gone, 
the meaning of that promise began gradually to dawn 
upon them. Peter, in his first speech at Pentecost, 
said, " Your old men shall dream dreams, and your 
young m.en and maidens shall see visions." That 
consciousness of God, which in the olden times was 
confined to a small number, was now to be diffused 
through all the church. It grew gradually into the 
consciousness of the church. First the church be- 
lieved that a few specially inspired men possessed it, 
and then that the whole hierarchy of priests and 
bishops possessed it. That is as far as the Roman 
Catholic Church has gone, to this day. Then men 
believed that special saints might possess it; and 
now, at last, we are beginning to believe that the 
whole Christian church possesses this direct per- 



83 S/G.VS OF PROMISE. 

sonal connection with God. There is growing up 
the doctrine of Christian consciousness in the church 
of Christ. I know there are Christian people who 
deny this doctrine, and other people who are afraid 
of it. When it is said that there is a living Christ in 
the church of to-day, and a living Christ is more than 
the Bible, they are afraid of it. I wonder what they 
would make of Christ's promises ? Let me read one: 
*^ I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot 
bear them now; howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, 
is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall 
not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, 
that shall he speak: and he will show you things to 
come." Is that true? Is there any Spirit to-day, 
guiding men into all truth, and teaching humanity 
some things that Christ could not teach because the 
human race was not ready to learn ? I wonder what 
they would say to the experience of Paul: " Where- 
fore, henceforth know we no man after the flesh: 
yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, 
yet now henceforth know we him no more." The 
knowledge of Christ that comes through the Spirit is 
higher than the knowledge that comes through the 
flesh. He that sat on Christ's right hand, or reclined 
on his bosom and looked up into his loving eyes, was 
nearer to him in the flesh; but by his spirit you are, 
every hour of the night and day, nearer to him than 
the one who lay upon his bosom, who touched his 
hand or looked into his eyes. 

But this Christ of our consciousness has grown 
out of the Christ revealed in history, just as the 



\ 



THE LA W OF PROGRESS. 83 

Christ revealed in history grew out of the old tradi- 
tion which anteceded and antedated it. Christian 
consciousness is not Christian if it be severed from 
the historic Christ. 

The boy goes to school, and as he takes his seat in 
the wagon he throws a kiss back to his mother, and 
as the wagon goes down the road he takes out his 
handkerchief and waves it to her, and the last thing 
he sees as the turn of the road hides the house from 
view is that mother standing upon the porch waving 
to him. During the school term he keeps that 
thought of mother with him, and it goes with him 
wherever he goes; it is the angel presence that guides 
him, it is the angel presence that guards him; he is 
carrying that mother with him into his daily, hourly 
life: but it is the mother he saw when he left home. 
Now the Christ that we carry with us through 
our life is the Christ we saw in Gethsemane, the 
Christ that suffered on the cross. This Christian 
consciousness in which we have faith and which knits 
us to him is rooted in the Christ of history; in the 
Apostles* Creed — I believe in Jesus Christ, His only- 
begotten Son, who was born of the Virgin Mary, 
crucified under Pontius Pilate, dead, buried, raised 
from the dead. Is this Christ less a leader than 
Moses? Has he brought the human race just to the 
edge of the great Red Sea of trouble and to the wilder- 
ness that lies beyond, and stepped one side and left 
humanity to go through this wilderness with only a 
memory of him? No! The Christ that dwells in 
us is the Christ that dwelt then; and the Christ that 



84 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

dwelt then is the Christ that dwells within us now, 
growing ever more and more and more into his 
church and into its life. Christianity is a steady 
stream which rose in the earliest days, in the frag- 
mentary manifestations of Christ, — "a lamp that 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world;" 
more and more revealing himself in the Old Testa- 
ment revelations of God, and coming out into a 
clearer manifestation in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, 
and to-day illuminating more and more our thought 
and life until the end shall come. 

Nothing is Christian progress which takes us away 
from either the Christ that is within us or the Christ 
that lived in the times of the past and interprets 
himself to us; and the end of all growth, as the 
origin of all growth, is Christ. All Christian growth 
has its beginning, its middle, and its end in him. 
Christ is the Alpha, the beginning, and the Omega, 
the ending. 

There are those who tell us of a second coming of 
Christ with great power and glory. They tell us, in 
effect, that the Old Testament worship was a failure 
and the New Testament came in to take its place; and 
that the New Testament is a failure and the second 
coming of Christ will come in by and by to take its 
place. If they are right, all I have said this morning is 
wrong. I believe in a second coming of Christ. I be- 
lieve that the yearning of every Christian spirit which 
voices itself in the hymn, " Nearer, my God, to Thee," 
will have some answer in the future. I believe this 
groping will lead on to something higher and better. 



THE LA W OF PROGRESS, 8$ 

But the higher will grow out of, never break in upon, 
the lower antecedent condition. You know how 
sometimes in the spring you wake in the morning and 
look out of the window, and you are surprised to see 
all of the trees in blossom; it is almost as if in one 
night they have clothed themselves with their spring 
glory. But there is no blossom on apple-bough or 
peach-branch that has not its history in the winter of 
the year, and in the autumn that preceded. And 
so, when the time of Christ's glory shall come, when 
war shall cease and rapine and murder shall be no 
more, and when he shall be King of kings and Lord 
of lords, crowned over all, though it be with a sudden 
burst of glory, — it shall be as the pond-lilies burst into 
bloom when the sun touches them with its mystic 
warmth: the lily has its root in the pond, and the 
glory of that revealed Christ will have its root and 
its development in all the history of the past. 

It was not with any thought of the measurably new 
relations with which I entered into this church this 
morning* that I prepared this sermon, but yet I 
trust. Christian friends, it will seem to you, as it has 
seemed to me, not inappropriate for this Sabbath 
morning. I desire that my ministry among you, 
howsoever brief it may be, howsoever long it may 
last, may all center around Jesus Christ as our Lord 
and Saviour. Let me, then, pledge you with my- 
self that, on the one hand, we will reject no thought 



* Preached the Sunday morning after acceptance of the invitation 
to serve temporarily as Acting Pastor of Plymouth Church. 



86 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

that brings us nearer to tliis Christ, we will fling wide 
open our doors to any heralding thought that has to 
do with the cross of Christ's love and the revelation 
of his mercy; and that, on the other hand, no thought 
or movement, whatever banner it may fly or with 
whatever sound of trumpet it may herald itself withal, 
shall enter the door of the sanctuary of our hearts, 
unless it bring Christ with it. 



V. 

GRAPES OF GALL. 

'* For their vine is of the vine of Sodom and of the fields of Go- 
morrah; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter." 

Deut, xxxii. 32. 

This is the prophet's characterization of the fruit- 
age of paganism. I propose this evening to make 
an expedition into the Promised Land of modern 
paganism. I think we shall find the prophet's charac- 
terization of its fruit as true now as it v/as over thirty 
centuries ago. 

For modern paganism is in its essential spirit iden- 
tical with ancient paganism, as modern faith is in its 
essential spirit identical with ancient faith. The 
great battle of the ages between spiritual religion 
and a purely earthy philosophy is, in its essential ele- 
ments, always the same. It varies in its form, but 
not in its essence. The great question of the nine- 
teenth century after Christ is, in its essential charac- 
ter, precisely the same as that of the first century. 
The question of to-day between the Christian church 



Delivered as a lecture before the American Institute of Christian 
Philosophy, at Key East, N. J., August 17, 1887, and stenograph- 
ically reported for Christian Thought by Arthur B. Cook. Sub- 
sequently repeated as a sermon in Plymouth Pulpit, November 6, 

87 



88 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

and the Godless philosophy is precisely that which 
Paul had to meet on Mars Hill, and Christ with the 
Sadducees of Palestine. It is a question of philoso- 
phy, a question of theology, a question of ethics. 

It is a question in philosophy. Spiritual philoso- 
phy asserts that there is an invisible and an intan- 
gible world — a world that transcends all perception by 
the senses; and that there is in man a power directly 
and immediately to perceive that world, to know it, 
not by deduction, not by argument, but by direct 
perception. This power is called, in the Bible, faith; 
in the Hindoo literature it is called the Yoga faculty. 
It is recognized by the prophet of every truly spiritual 
religion: Socrates, Buddha, Christ, Paul. This philo- 
sophic issue is not merely religious. It underlies 
art and literature as well. According to the material- 
istic philosophy, art and literature impute something 
to nature. According to the spiritual philosophy, 
art and literature discover something in nature. 
According to the one, man speaks — the poet, the 
artist, the sculptor, the writer — and listens for the 
echo of his own voice, which comes back to him from 
the sea, the clouds, the river, the mountain. Accord- 
to the other, he listens, and sea, river, clouds, moun- 
tains speak to him, and then he translates their voice, 
unheard by other ears, that other ears may hear it. 

It is a question in theology. According to the 
spiritual religion, man directly and immediately sees 
God. He does not merely conclude God from cer- 
tain phenomena. God is not merely a scientific 
hypothesis to account for the order of the creation. 



GRAPES OF GALL. 89 

On the contrary, he is the most real, he is the most 
immediately known, in all the universe. He is, in the 
expressive words of Faber, " Never so far as even to 
be near." According to the other philosophy, God, 
unseen, untouched, unheard, is unknown. He is at 
best only an hypothesis. Under the teaching of this 
sensational philosophy,* we conclude, with John 
Stuart Mill, that there is a God, but an imperfect 
one, imperfect in wisdom, in knowledge, in love, and 
in power; or we conclude, with Huxley, that all talk 
of a God is mere babbling, tinkling cymbals and 
sounding brass, — that is, we are agnostic; or we con- 
clude, with Professor Clifford, that there is no God: 
the dim and shadowy features of the Superhuman 
fade from our vision, and there appears instead the 
august figure of man, — man, who, says Prof. Clifford, 
** made all gods, and will unmake them," — man, who, 
says Prof. Clifford, declares: "Before Jehovah was, 
I am." 

This issue, which is philosophical and theological, 
is also ethical. In the one philosophy there are great 
laws of right and wrong. They are ultimate facts. 
The right is right, as God is God. According to the 
other philosophy, the ultimate facts are pain and 
pleasure. That is right which produces pleasure, 
that is wrong which produces pain. If you will ex- 
cuse the familiar illustration, I can set this point be- 
fore you by a simple story, and a true one. My 



* So called because it is based wholly on the testimony of the 
senses, all other testimony being regarded as unverifiable. 



90 S/GXS OF PROMISE. 

father, sitting at the boarding-house table next a 
French Roman Catholic lady, remarked: ** I do not 
know whether it is owing to religion or to race, but 
the French seem to have a different theory of truth 
from the English. According to the French theory 
it is wrong to tell a lie if it will do harm, but accord- 
ing to the English theory it is wrong to tell a lie 
whether it will do harm or not." *' No, no," said the 
French lady, ^^ not at all, Mr. Abbott; I think the 
French are just as truthful as the English." " O," 
said my father, ''I did not say that the French were 
not just as truthful as the English. I said that their 
theory of truth was different: that according to the 
French theory it was wrong to tell a lie if it would 
do harm, but according to the English theory it was 
wrong to tell a lie whether it would do harm or good." 
** No!" said she, " I do not think there is any differ- 
ence at all in the theories. And besides, why isn't it 
right to tell a lie if it will do good ?" 

This is the three-fold issue that confronts us in the 
nineteenth century. Is there an invisible world, and 
is there in man a power which can directly perceive 
it, or is all knowledge Vv'oven in the loom of threads 
that are gathered by the senses and handled by the 
reason ? Is there a God that can be directly and im- 
mediately known ? Does soul touch soul, spirit touch 
spirit? Or are there no voices that cannot be heard 
by the ear, no forms that cannot be seen by the eye, 
no throb or thrill that cannot be interpreted in the 
waves of the atmosphere ? Are there great laws of 
right and wrong that are absolute, eternal, and im- 



GRAPES OF GALL 9 1 

mutable, so that men should follow them though they 
follow them to crucifixion, for themselves, for their 
wives, for their nation, for the race, for time, or even 
for eternity? Or is the end of life pleasure, and are 
we to live simply for our own happiness and the hap- 
piness of those that adjoin us? In the presence of 
this great issue, all other questions become, if not in- 
significant, at least of secondary importance. In the 
presence of this great issue, questions of form and 
ceremony, questions of creed, questions of philosophy 
and theology, questions of interpretation of doubt- 
ful texts of Scripture, drop into the background. 
Whether or not there is a God in nature, a soul in 
man, and a law of right and wrong in the universe: 
this is the transcendent question of the nineteenth 
century, as of all centuries. 

Now the philosophy which I must call infidel — I do 
not wish to attach to it an opprobrious epithet, but I 
know not how else to describe it in a single word — 
the philosophy which we call infidel claims our atten- 
tion on two grounds. It claims, in the first place, to 
be pre-eminently rational and scientific, and, in the 
second place, to be pre-eminently humanitarian. I 
am not going to speak of the first claim to-day, but 
only of the second. Is it humanitarian ? This infidel 
philosophy, which declares that there is no invisible 
world, or at least no power in man to perceive tliat 
which the senses cannot perceive, — this infidel philos- 
ophy, which declares that there is no God, at least 
none that can be known, and no great laws of riglit 
and wrong, only laws of pleasure and of pain, — tliis 



92 S/GA^S OF PROMISE. 

infidel philosophy beckons to us and says: *^ I have 
come to emancipate you. You have been under the 
rule of priests and churches long enough. You have 
stood in awe of an imaginary God long enough. 
You have trembled before the fears of a dread future 
long enough. You have been deluded by the illusive 
hopes of a future long enough. I have come to set 
you free from the awe of God, that you may simply 
revere and admire man. I have come to set you free 
from the service of God, that you may give yourself 
to the service of man. 1 have come to take away from 
you the illusory dread and the equally illusory hope 
of the future. I am the religion of humanity." 

Well, I ask, then, that you look with me and 
see what it is that this religion of humanity offers 
to us. We are walking along a great highway. 
The cross of Christ goes before us. Thousands have 
preceded, and thousands are accompanying. It gives 
us — we know what. And voices come out to us from 
the right hand and from the left, saying, " Turn aside. 
We have found something better." I ask them, 
'^ What have you found ?" And I ask them to tell us 
what they have found. That is all. 

In this question I do not propose to bring infidel 
philosophy to spiritual tests. The humanitarian says 
to us: ''You must measure my philosophy by that 
which it offers to do — its service to humanity." Very 
well, I say, we agree. We accept for the hour the 
immense egotism which declares that man is the 
supreme object of reverence and worship in the uni- 
verse. We accept for the moment the philosophy 



GRAPES OF GALL, 93 

which sets aside the service of God and substitutes 
the service of man. We accept the humanitarian 
standard. Is the religion of humanity or the religion 
of spiritual life the belter servitor of man and the 
better preparation for earthly life? And in seeking 
to answer this question I shall not ask what the 
enemies of this philosophy say of it. I shall ask what 
their exponents and representatives say of it. I shall 
invite their own prophets upon this platform to tell 
you for themselves what it is they have to offer to 
humanity, in the name of humanity, in the place of 
the religion of the Old Testament and of the New 
Testament, in the place of the religion of all spiritual 
teachers, of all religions, and of all times. 

In the first place, then, spiritual religion, not merely 
that of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, 
but that of all ages and of all times, declares that 
man is a child of God. Paul, speaking on Mars Hill, 
summons, not a Jewish prophet, but a pagan poet, 
to bear testimony: ^^ We are his offspring." The 
writer of the book of Genesis, describing the origin 
of the human race, declares that into the body God 
breathed the breath of life. He thus expresses the 
same idea — man an emanation from the very heart 
and soul of God. We came from him, we return to 
him again. This is the underlying postulate of all 
spiritual philosophy. It is expressed with great sim- 
plicity and with great graphicness also in the third 
chapter of Luke, in the genealogy of Christ. I read 
only a few verses; you can supply the rest : *^ Jesus 
himself began to be about thirty years of ago, being 



94 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

(as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the 
son of Heli, which was the son of Matthat," and so 
on, ending, " which was the son of Seth, which was 
the son of Adam, which was the son of God." This 
is the genealogy of spiritual philosophy. It traces 
humanity back through all the ages until it finds the 
origin of the first soul in God himself: God the g^reat 
mountain, whose peaks are above the clouds, and in 
which all the springs are gathered that feed all the 
rivers of humanity throughout all the ages. Let me 
not be misunderstood. What is man? This physical 
organization: these legs, this body, this beating heart, 
these lungs, these eyes, this brain ? No! God formed 
the body out of the dust of the earth. He evolved that 
out of lower materials. How long he was in doing 
it, and what was the method of the procedure, the 
writer of Genesis does not tell us, and probably did 
not know. Whether it was done by some instantane- 
ous process, or whether by long and gradual pro- 
cesses from lower orders of life, is immaterial. How 
the ship was built is not the question. Whence came 
the Captain that commands it ? That is the question. 
And spiritual philosophy declares that — whether by 
long process or quick process, by gradual evolution 
or by instantaneous creation, no matter — when, by 
some method of God's own workmanship, the physical 
organism had been built, the living inhabitant was 
breathed into It by the very breath of God himself. 
Now the philosophy which denies the invisible, the 
intangible, the supersensible, denies and must deny 
this divine origin of the human race. It traces not 



GRAPES OF GALL, 95 

merely the animal man back to animal organisms, 
not merely the mechanic man back to mechanic 
organisms; it runs the genealogy of man the spirit 
back into the very dust of the earth. I am an animal; 
of course I am an animal. I am a vertebrate animal, 
and of the order of mammalia. No one questions that. 
But am I anything more than an animal? Am I an 
animal Jf/us? Is it the highest compliment you can 
pay to any man to say, He is a perfect animal ? The 
religion of humanity runs back the genealogy of man, 
with all his powers, with all his equipments, back to 
the dust of the earth. I hold in my hand a genealogy 
which I wish you to compare with the genealogy of 
Luke. It is not a satire, it is not an irony. I have 
taken it from the pages of Ernst Haeckel. It is true, 
I have condensed it from perhaps a dozen pages, but 
in that condensation I have followed precisely the 
line traced by the atheistic philosopher. What is 
omitted is simply the detailed description of the 
several species in the genealogy. Let me read it : 

"Monera begat Amoebae, Amoebae begat Synamoebae, 
Synamoebae begat Ciliated Larva, Ciliated Larva begat 
Primeval Stomach Animals, Primeval Stomach Animals 
begat Gliding Worms, Gliding Worms begat Soft Worms, 
Soft Worms begat Sack Worms, Sack Worms begat Skull- 
less Animals, Skull-less Animals begat Single-nostriled 
Animals, Single-nostriled Animals begat Primeval Fish, 
Primeval Fish begat Mud Fish, Mud Fish begat Gilled Am- 
phibians, Gilled Amphibians begat Tailed Amphibians, 
Tailed Amphibians bei^at Primeval Amniota, Primeval Am- 
niota begat Primary Mammals, Primary Mammals begat 



96 S/GA'S OF PROMISE. 

Pouched Animals, Pouched Animals begat Semi-apes, Semi- 
apes begat Tailed Apes, Tailed Apes begat Man -like Apes, 
Man-like Apes begat Ape-like Men, Ape-like Men begat 
Men." 

There are the two genealogies, side by side: choose 
between them. 

The philosophy which denies any divine origin to 
man, any divine breath ever breathed into him, denies 
that he possesses any divine qualities, denies that he 
possesses any divine spirit. The same philosophy 
which denies the power in man to perceive the invis- 
ible, having ransacked the universe and brought back 
the word that " the Great Companion is dead," and 
that out of a soulless sky there speaks no God, puts 
the human frame on the table, takes the scalpel and 
makes search for a human soul, — careful search, 
scrutinizing search, conscientious search, with the 
microscope. It can find nerves and bone and sinew 
and muscle, but it can find no soul. This is its 
answer: "We can find nerve, but no emotion; 
we can find heart, but no feeling; we can find 
muscle, but no will." And so the conclusion of this 
religion of humanity is that, as there is no God 
in the universe, so there is no spirit in the body. 
**What we call the operations of the mind," says 
Huxley, "^ are functions of the brain, and the materials 
of consciousness are products of cerebral activity. 
Cabanis may have made use of crude and misleading 
phraseology when he said that the brain secretes 
thought as the liver secretes bile. But the concep- 
tion which that much-abused phrase embodies is, 



GRAPES OF GALL. 9/ 

nevertheless, far more consistent with the fact than 
the popular notion that the mind is a metaphysical 
entity, seated in the head, but as independent of the 
brain as a telegraph operator is of his instrument." 
You are only an electrical machine. So long as the 
wheel is kept going the fluid will be generated and 
pulsate; and love, and hope, and aspiration, and de- 
sire, and prayer, — all these are but the sparks that 
fly off. All the intellectual processes of a Laplace 
or of a Newton are generated by the brain as the 
liver secretes bile. All the heroism of ten thousand 
battle-fields, only the products of a physical organiza- 
tion, or the outgrowth of a mere animal and sensual 
organism! No affection, no will-power! ^^ I hold," 
says Sir Henry Maudsley, " emotion to mean the 
special sensibility of the vesicular neurine to ideas." 
A mother's love for her child simply the tintinnabu- 
lation of a certain nervous matter! Emotion, at best, 
only an ^Eolian harp, fine-strung and put upon the 
window-sill and playing such music as the wind may 
evoke from it! That is all. You thought you loved. 

no! You only had a sensibility of vesicular 
neurine! ^* Physiologically," says Sir Henry Mauds- 
ley, ** we cannot choose but reject the \m\\\\ volition 
we know, and will we know; but the will, apart from 
particular acts of volition or will, we cannot know." 

Man without a soul, only an organism that secretes 
thought as the liver secretes bile; without affection, 
only having vesicular neurine; and without a will! 

1 look off upon this horizon, and I see what ? It is an 
ocean steamer plowing its way along the waves. 



98 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

The fog gathers around it, and the fog cannot balk 
it. The great waves heap up and toss themselves 
upon it, and they cannot drive it back. The wind 
howls around it, and the wind cannot halt it, no, not 
for a moment. For within it there are the great en- 
gines, and a hand holds the helm and can guide it 
whithersoever it will. I look again. I see another 
steamer lying there. It is tossed to and fro in the 
trough of the great sea; it is flung back and forth, 
dismantled, dismasted, wrecked, the waves sweeping 
over it, the rudder gone. The one is man as spiritual 
philosophy interprets him, having power within him- 
self, — power of guidance, of self-control, of mastery, 
of progress; and the other, man as he is interpreted 
by the unspiritual philosophy, a dismantled hulk, 
without affection, without spirit, without will, tossed 
to and fro on this always tempestuous sea of life, 
with but one issue possible, that when the storm shall 
have done its work the old hulk shall sink out of 
sight, forever, in a grave from which there is no 
awakening. 

As there is no divine origin to man, and no divine 
spirit within him, according to the prophets of the 
religion of humanity, so there are no great merits or 
demerits in man's action. Oicght is a word that the 
religion of hum.anity strikes from the dictionary. 
Praise and blame, in all their higher senses, are 
stricken out. Man is but a machine, and you cannot 
predicate moral wickedness or moral virtue of a ma- 
chine. Your watch may not keep good time, but you 
will not punish it. Garfield is a good machine, and 



^ 



GRAPES OF GALL. 99 

we will place him upon the mantelpiece, where all 
the world can see him. Guiteau is a bad machine; 
like an unexploded bomb, he may go off and hurt 
some one. We will bury him underground, where he 
will do no harm. But there is no praise in the one 
and no blame in the other. Do you say this is my 
deduction? Not at all. I am only asking the 
prophets of this philosophy to tell you themselves 
what it gives to you. "Were one to go around the 
world," says Hume, "with the intention of giving a 
good supper to the righteous and a sound drubbing 
to the wicked, he would frequently be embarrassed 
in his choice, and would find the merits and demerits 
of most men and women scarcely amount to the value 
of either." 

Read over the pages of history and note the rec- 
ord of all the malice and uncharitableness and hate 
and wrath; of all bloody wars inspired by insane 
ambition and of bloodier persecutions inspired by in- 
saner superstition. Read the whole dreadful record, 
and then write under it: " No one of them so much 
as deserved a good drubbing." Read the record of 
your own country for the last half-century; read the 
story that has been written in blood with the sword 
unsheathed, and in green mounds on Southern battle- 
fields; read the story of heroism, of self-sacrifice, of 
self-denying love, of anguish and broken hearts at 
home, and of wounded boys far away, and then write 
underneath it this : " In all this wifely, womanly, 
motherly love, in all this manly heroism and cour- 
age, not so much merit as to deserve a good supper!" 



lOO SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

This is not mine, it is Hume's interpretation of life. 
This is what the religion of humanity gives us, call- 
ing us away from the spiritual philosophy that recog- 
nizes in man a child of God, within him a divine 
spirit, before him a noble future. A philosophy that 
declares he came from the mud-fish and the sack- 
worms, a philosophy that declares that his emotion 
is vesicular neurine and his will is nought; a philoso- 
phy that declares that over him and about him are no 
great laws of right and wrong, and in all he does no 
merit that deserves praise and no sin that deserves 
reprobation. 

But if an individual has no will, ten individuals 
have no will^ a thousand individuals have no will, fifty 
million individuals have no will. If there is no power 
of self-control in one, there is no power of self-con- 
trol in a nation. Fifty million times nothing is still 
nothing. The philosophy that denies the power of 
self-government to the individual, because it makes 
him a mere machine, denies to the community the 
power of self-government. The religion of humanity 
comes, it says, to emancipate us, and yet the advo- 
cates of the religion of humanity have never been 
the advocates of liberty. I say without hesitation, 
at all events I challenge contradiction to the state- 
ment and shall gladly make exception if the excep- 
tion can be pointed to, that in the long array of 
heroes and of statesmen who have fought and suf- 
fered to advance human liberty, from the days of 
Moses to the days of Ulysses S. Grant, there is not to 
be found one single man who has taken up his sword, 



GRAPES OF GALL, lOI 

aye, or his pen, and suffered for human liberty, who 
has believed in this Godless philosophy. I do not for- 
get Thomas Jefferson. I do not forget the deists and 
the unbelievers. Neither do I forget that it was 
Thomas Jefferson that said: "I tremble for my 
country when I reflect that God is just.'* The phi- 
losophy that denies a divine origin to man, and a 
divine spirit within him, is a philosophy that never 
has bred a hero, and scarce ever even a writer, for 
human liberty. I confess this last was a surprise to 
me when I discovered it the other day, — for I think 
it is true. I found the testimony to this fact in the 
pages of Lecky; and Lecky is not, as you know, a 
man to bear prejudiced testimony in favor of spiritual 
religion. 

" In England," says Mr. Lecky, *' Hobbes, who was the 
first very considerable free-thinker, constructed the political 
philosophy which is beyond all others favorable to despotism. 
Bolingbroke was the most brilliant leader of the Tory party. 
Hume was the best exponent of the Tory view of English 
history, and all his sympathies were with a benevolent 
despotism. Gibbon as a quiet Tory member steadily sup- 
ported the American policy of North ; and when the French 
Revolution broke out, his judgment of it was precisely simi- 
lar to that of Burke. In France, Bayle wrote with horror 
of the democratic and seditious principles disseminated 
among French Huguenots, and there is no reason to believe 
that the great writers of the period of the Encyclopnedia 
were animated by a diflercnt spirit. . . . Voltaire, in his 
theory of government, was essentially monarchical. Demo- 
cratic government was equally repugnant to his judgment 
and to his tastes. All his leanings were towards rank and 



I02 SIGJVS OF PROMISE, 

culture and refinement ; and while sincerely desiring to im- 
prove the material condition of the masses of mankind, he 
had very little genuine sympathy with them, and an utter 
disbelief in their capacities. He could not forgive Shake- 
speare for his close contact with common types of life and 
character, and for his complete disregard of the conventional 
elegancies and stateliness of the French stage ; and his 
ignoble sneers at the humble origin of the Maid of Orleans, 
and at the poor relations of Rousseau, disclose a feeling 
which was expressed in innumerable passages in his con- 
fidential letters. ' We have never/ he once wrote, * pre- 
tended to enlighten shoe-makers and servants.' 'The true 
public is always a minority. The rest is the vulgar. Work 
for the little public' * What the populace requires is guid- 
ance, not instruction. It is not worthy of the latter.' " 

The philosophy which begins by disbelieving in 
God, ends by disbelieving in man. It disbelieves in 
his divine origin, it disbelieves in his divine nature, 
it disbelieves in his power of self-control, and there- 
fore it necessarily disbelieves in the power of self- 
government wrought out in human institutions and 
in human life. 

Over against that I set, for one moment to-day, in 
contrast, the religion of the spirit. I am aware that 
the church has often been apostate to its own faith. 
I am aware that it has often violated that very prin- 
ciple of liberty which is fundamental in its constitu- 
tion. I am aware that it has done so in the past and, 
alas! is doing so even in the present. I am aware 
that the very church which holds in its hands the in- 
strument which compels men to think, also has tried 
to put bonds and shackles on their minds that they 



GRAPES OF GALL, IO3 

may not think. I do not forget the persecutions of 
the past; I do not forget the more subtle persecutions 
of the present. Nevertheless, I stand by the great 
historic facts: First, this : that the Bible, in every 
page, from Genesis to Revelation, is written all over 
with the resplendent light of liberty ; that when 
Moses first called the children of Israel together and 
massed them at the foot of Mount Sinai, not even 
God Almighty would assume to be their king until 
he had sent Moses down to take their vote, by uni- 
versal suffrage, whether they would have him to be 
their king or not; that, in the New Testament again, 
Christ's words to his disciples were, ^^ Call no man 
master;" and Paul's, *^ Every man shall give account 
of himself to God." And along with that I put the 
other great fact that the history of liberty has always 
followed, in its successive evolutions, the history of 
the Christian church. Freedom growing out of the 
Bible has made liberty efflorescent and fruitful in 
the community. It was the Protestant Reformation 
that was the mother of liberty in Europe and in 
America. In England and in Germany, where it 
won its battle, there liberty was triumphant; in 
Spain and France, where it was defeated, there lib- 
erty died the death. And the only nation that has 
ever undertaken to build a temple of liberty on a 
Godless philosophy was the French people, — a temple 
that was being fired at the one end by the very men 
that were building it at the other. 

This religion of humanity, — which denies a divine 
origin to man, denies a divine spirit to him, denies 



104 S/G.VS OF PROMISE. 

great laws of right and wrong, and therefore denies 
all great merit and demerit; denies liberty to the indi- 
vidual, and therefore of necessity denies liberty to the 
state; which has furnished no heroes and few defend- 
ers, even, of human freedom, — this religion of human- 
ity equips man with despair. It plucks out of life its 
fairest flower, hope. No man can look within himself 
and no man can look out upon life and not see that hu- 
manity is full of aspiration and desire and outreach. 
Like the plant beneath the earth, it is climbing ever 
toward the sunlight, though it knows not what the 
sunlight is, nor where it shall be found. But there 
is no sunlight, according to this materialistic phi- 
losophy. There is only an earth, earthy; and all the 
hopes and aspirations of hum.anity are born in men 
only to be disappointments, only to end in despair. 
We are like travelers on the great sandy desert, the 
sky above us burning brass, the earth beneath us 
burning sand; the very wind that blows, a scorching 
wind from the open-mouthed furnace. Far off upon 
the horizon we see what ? Green trees, grass, a 
spring of w^ater. We hasten toward it; when we have 
reached the horizon, it is only to find that the vision 
has disappeared to reappear still farther on; hope al- 
ways beckoning and always eluding ; man following 
throughout all his life a mirage, to perish in the 
desert at last and leave nothing but bleaching bones 
behind him. 

" The essence of life, according to Schopenhauer,'* 
says Professor Bowen, *^ is unsatisfied purpose, a 
striving to be what we are not, and to gain what we 



GRAPES OF GALL, 10$ 

have not; and the fruit of life is disappointment and 
sorrow, the end whereof is death. The only possible 
virtues, then, are pity — pity for all other beings who 
are as wretched as we are; resignation or submission 
to the inevitable ills of life; and self-abnegation, or a 
renunciation of the will to live, which is a virtual re- 
turn to Nothingness — the only heaven which Scho- 
penhauer admits as possible." He adds: "These 
gloomy and misanthropic views of human life are 
held only by skeptics, like Bayle, Hume, and Vol- 
taire, or by open atheists, like Schopenhauer. Be- 
lievers, such as Leibnitz, Barrow, Tucker, Paley, and 
others either preach Optimism or so great a prepon- 
derance of good over evil, even in this world, as to 
amply vindicate the goodness of its Creator. Be 
their opinion well founded or not, it certainly casts 
sunshine on their pathway through life, while unbe- 
lief shrouds it in sorrow and darkness. The latter is 
a religion, if it can be so called, of gloom, misan- 
thropy, and despair: and no more striking illustra- 
tion of this fact can be found than in the philosophy, 
if it deserves that name, of the atheist Schopen- 
hauer.*' 

The religion of humanity, which has taken away 
from man his sublime faith in a divine origin, which 
has taken away from man his consciousness of a 
divine nature, which has taken away from man his 
striving after merit and his endeavor to escape the 
condemnation of himself and others, which has taken 
away from man his love of liberty, takes away from 
him all hope, and leaves him to expect nothing for 



I06 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

himself or his race but blighted buds and withered 
fruits. And so, of course, it takes away all hope in 
that hour when hope is most needed — in the hour 
of death. '* If I thought," wrote Rousseau, "that I 
should not see her in the other life, my poor imagi- 
nation would shrink from the idea of perfect bliss, 
which I would fain promise myself in it." On which 
Mr. John Morley, ablest and most courageous Eng- 
lish apostle of the religion of humanity, thus com- 
ments: *^ To pluck so gracious a flower of hope on 
the edge of the sombre, unechoing gulf of nothing- 
ness into which our friend has slid silently down, is a 
natural impulse of the sensitive soul, numbing re- 
morse and giving a moment's relief to the hunger 
and thirst of a tenderness that has been robbed of 
its object. Yet would not men be more likely to 
have a deeper love for those about them, and a 
keener dread of filling a house with aching hearts, if 
they courageously realized from the beginning of 
their days that we have none of this perfect compan- 
ionable bliss to promise ourselves in other worlds, 
that the black and horrible grave is indeed the end 
of our communion, and that we know one another no 
more?" Death has called your friend; you stand at 
the edge and look down into that grave into which 
the body has been laid; and this is the word which 
the prophet of the religion of humanity utters above 
it: " Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes; but 
no spirit and no God that gave it." And it calls it- 
self, while it looks on your blinding tears and your 
broken heart, a religion of humanity ! 



GRAPES OF GALL. IC/ 

And this religion, which denies a divine origin 
and a divine nature, a divine virtue, a divinely en- 
dowed and bequeathed liberty, a divine hope in 
life and a divine hope in death, denies it all be- 
cause it denies God, and all the sunshine, all the 
hope and radiance and inspiration that come from 
God. 

" It cannot be doubted," says Professor Clifford, 
** that theistic belief is a comfort and a solace to 
those who hold it, and that the loss of it is a very pain- 
ful loss. It cannot be doubted, at least by many of 
us in this generation, who either profess it now, or 
received it in our childhood and have parted from it 
since, with such searching trouble as only cradle- 
faiths can cause. We have seen the spring sun shine 
out of an empty heaven, to light up a soulless earth ; 
we have felt with utter loneliness that the Great 
Companion is dead.'* 

We are in the woods. We are traveling that great 
highway which the Christian church has traversed 
throughout all these ages, and the cross of self-sacri- 
fice goes before us, and from it there streams a light 
which cheers us. It declares to us that we are the 
children of God; that in us is a divine sonship. It 
witnesses to us that all the anxieties and pains and 
heart-searchings and outreachings of this life are 
buds that promise fruit. It witnesses to us that all 
the pain and anguish of life is a divinely ordained 
ministry to this higher nature within us. It bids us 
to glory in tribulations also, and puts into our lips 
this song: " If God be for us, who can be against us? 



I08 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

I will not fear what man can do unto me." And the 
voices sound out from the woods on the right hand 
and on the left: " Come, follow us. We will show 
you a more excellent way. Cease to bow the knee 
to this awful God. Worship man. Cease to fear 
your future or to borrow hope from it. Live for 
time, live for your fellows; come, follow us." And 
we ask, "What have you found, that you summon us 
to follow you ?'* And Haeckel says, " I have found 
that you are children of mud-fish and worms;" and 
Huxley says, " I have found that your brain secretes 
thought as the liver secretes bile;" and Maudsley 
says, " I have found that your emotions are only the 
special sensibility of vesicular neurine, and you have 
no will;" and Hume says, *^ I have found that, do 
your best, you cannot so much as earn a good sup- 
per;" and Hobbes and Voltaire say, " We have found 
that you are not free men, and never can organize a 
free state, and that common folks are not even 
worthy of instruction;" and Schopenhauer says, "I 
have found that all your desires and aspirations are 
wrought in you only to make life more full of an- 
guish; and the only hope is Nothingness;" and Mor- 
ley says, " There is no light beyond the black and 
horrible grave, no companionship, no future;" and 
Clifford says, " Out of the soulless sky there sounds 
no divine voice, for the Great Companion is dead." 
"This is what we have found; follow us, follow 
us!" 

No ! no ! we will not follow you. For you have 
not even anything new to offer us. You offer us only 



GRAPES OF GALL, IO9 

the old, old paganism ; the Fate of the Persian poet : 

* ' We are no other than a moving row 
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go 
Round with this Sun-illumined Lantern held 
In Midnight by the Master of the Show; 

** Impotent Pieces of the Game He plays 
Upon this Checker-board of Nights and Days; 
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays, 
And one by one back in the Closet lays. 

** The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes 
But Right or Left as strikes the Player goes; 
And He that toss'd you down into the Field, 
He knows about it all — He knov^rs — He knows. 

** The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, 
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor wit 
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, 
Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it. 

** And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, 
Whereunder, crawling, coop'd, we live and die. 
Lift not your hands to It for help, — for it 
As impotently rolls as you or I." 

These are the grapes of gall which this modern 
creed of the creedless would give us for the Christian's 
faith and hope : man without a soul ; life without 
liberty; the universe without a God; on the earth 
only animals ; in the heavens only an It. 

I am speaking these words undoubtedly to Chris- 
tian believers ; and it has been a little question with 
me whether there was any use in saying these things 
to you, who are not in danger of following Maudsley 
and Hume and Huxley and Clifford : I would much 



no SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

rather have spoken to an audience of skeptics than 
of Christian believers. But if it be true that this 
soulless philosophy is filtering down into men's 
minds through the daily press and lectures and news- 
papers and magazines and common talk; if it be true 
that men are holding it — not indeed as a completed 
entity, as I have tried to describe it to you, but in 
bits and fragments here and there; if it be true that 
it is helping to feed the life of sensuality, of vice, of 
self-indulgence, of frivolity, that we see all about us; 
— if this be true, then. Christian men and women, I do 
lay it on your consciences with all the force and 
power I possess (would God I had more !) not to stop 
by the way to quarrel with your neighbor of another 
church, or of your own church, about doubtful 
questions in philosophy and in ceremony, but to join 
heart and hand, soul and strength, to teach our 
youth and our children, to convince our generation, 
that the Great Companion is not dead; that the 
grave is not a black and horrible pit, but the open 
door to a blessed immortality; that life is not a Des- 
ert of Sahara, but full of sweet flowers of hope and 
joy, fed even by the raindrops that fall from our 
eyes; and that man is not a child of the worm, to re- 
turn to the worms again, but a son of God, in whom 
we live and move and have our being, and to whom 
we shall come again in the cycle of our completed 
life. 



VI. 

THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 

** For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is 
Jesus Christ." — i Cor. iii. ii. 

Paul was the most tolerant and the most catholic 
of men: catholic, enabling him to give his sympathies 
to men of all various races and of all various beliefs; 
tolerant of all forms of opinion, and even of all de- 
fects in the moral nature. So catholic that he in- 
cluded in his sympathies the great pagan world, and 
gave himself for its redemption ; so tolerant that 
when men preached a Christ of enmity, he said, ^* What 
matters it so long as Christ is preached ?" ^ But there 
is one thing of which he was not tolerant: any phi- 
losophy or any teaching which took Christ out of 
Christianity. " Other foundation," he said, *^ can no 
man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus 
Christ." A man might build on that foundation of 
hay, of straw, or of stubble; but the moment any one 
tried to disturb the foundation, he was condemned. 
So Paul said to the Colossians: ** Though an angel 
from heaven shall preach to you another gospel than 
that which I have preached, cast him out." So he 



Plymouth Church, Sunday morning, October 7, iSSS. 
* PhiL i. 15-18. 



Ill 



112 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

said to the Corinthians: ^^ If any man love not our 
Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.'* Paul did 
not propose to thrust him into an auto da fe \n this 
life, nor into hell-fire in the life to come, but simply 
stated that the condition of fellowship is faith in 
Christ Jesus. If any man has faith in Christ, fellow- 
ship with him. If any man denies that faith, he is not 
to be taken into fellowship. You cannot work with 
him, you cannot build on any philosophy which he 
may promulgate. John said the same thing. "He 
that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both 
the Father and the Son. If there come any unto 
you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into 
your house, neither bid him godspeed." The house 
in the apostolic days was the gathering-place of the 
church. Social fellowship was Christian fellowship. 
Every breaking of bread together was a Lord's Sup- 
per. John says. If any man disowns Christ, you are 
not to receive him into your church life and work. 
Christ is the center of both. He who circles not 
about Christ, but about some other center, cannot 
belong to us. 

The skepticism which assails the Christian relig- 
ion as an imposture, and Christ himself as either a 
fanatic, self-deceived, or as deceiving others, has, for 
the most part, passed away. Though still there are 
in this country to be found men who have sat at the 
feet of Voltaire and Thomas Paine, and who repeat 
in altered forms that which they have learned from 
their masters, it is safe to say that that form of skep- 
ticism takes no hold on either the moral or the intel- 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY, II3 

lectual culture of America. In this congregation, and 
for present purposes, I may pass it by. But there 
has lately come, not indeed into existence, but into 
prominence, what I may call, what one of its own 
advocates has called, the Religion of Humanity — a 
favorite title! This is not that ^^ religion of human- 
ity" which would make man a soulless clod. It is of 
a higher grade. It proposes to retain Christian- 
ity? Certainly ; it calls itself Christianity, and even 
preaches sometimes from Christian pulpits. It does 
not discard Christianity, but the supernatural; it dis- 
cards all miracles, as impossible, or at all events as 
not sufficiently attested. It discards the incarnation 
and the resurrection. It discards from Christianity 
the divine nature of Christ, and gives us in his place 
a human hero, to be reverenced, to be accepted as a 
teacher, but who is, nevertheless, but a human hero. 
The atonement, the incarnation, the resurrection — 
these it treats as the accidents, the fungi grown upon 
Christianity, the barnacles upon the ship's sides, the 
religious accretions of a later day, forms of supersti- 
tion engrafted upon Christianity. Let us sweep them 
all off, and have an approved, modern Christianity — 
a Christianity without a divine Christ — a Christianity 
without a miracle, without a revelation of God or a 
divine and authoritative law for man — a Christianity 
that is evolved by and from humanity — a human 
Christianity founded on a human Christ. Some- 
times this is presented in a fascinating biography, as 
in Renan's ** Life of Jesus;" sometimes in a fascinat- 
ing philosophy, as in '' The Religion of Humanity," 



1 14 S/GA'S OF PROMISE, 

by Mr. Frothingham; sometimes in a fascinating ro- 
mance, as in ** Robert Elsmere." But, however it 
presents itself to us, in philosophy or in romance, it 
is always the same. Not founded on a divine Christ, 
not on an incarnate God, not on a risen Saviour, not 
attested by miracles, not bearing a revelation from 
God: never a revelation from God to man, but only 
an aspiration of man after God. 

Now, there are some of us, and I am one of that 
number, who believe that religious faith must be cast 
in a new form, and find new expression; who believe 
that the old creeds do not suffice to tell the story of 
modern faith; who believe that the new wine of to- 
day cannot be put in the old leathern bottles, for the 
bottles will not hold the fermenting wine; who be- 
lieve that there should be not only new forms of faith 
and expression, but that there should be new experi- 
ences, new types of religious life. Every age must 
have its own language; every age must praise God 
in its own song. Every age must find a way of its 
own to express its faith in God. But there are some 
things in our faith that do not change from age to age; 
some things that are unalterable. There are some 
things that are fundam.ental : and the one thing that 
is fundamental, according to the teaching of Paul and 
the teaching of Jesus Christ, is faith in Jesus as the 
Divine Redeemer of the world. And w^hat I wish to do 
this morning, as well as I can in so brief a time as your 
patience will allow me, is to contrast the religion of 
humanity with the religion of Jesus Christ, that you 
may note the contrast between them, that you may not 



THE RELIGION- OF HUMANITY. II5 

be deceived — especially those that are younger — by 
any gloss or any fascinating illusion of any notion that 
you can hold fast to the essential faith of your fathers 
and still discard the supernatural as an unnecessary 
and superstitious accretion to spiritual Christianity. 

There are four fundamental respects in which the 
Religion of Humanity differs from the Christian faith. 

I. In the first place, the Religion of Humanity as it 
is represented, for example, in Renan's '' Life of 
Jesus" or in *^ Robert Elsmere," gives us as our 
leader, as the center of our faith, as the object of our 
reverence, a human hero. It proposes to us to substi- 
tute for the worship of a manifested and disclosed 
God a hero-worship. And in proposing this it really 
proposes what will end, as it did in the experience of 
Strauss, with the abolition of all worship. For the 
days of hero-worship are gone, if, indeed, the days of 
hero-worship, that is, the days when hero-worship was 
legitimate, ever existed. No man ever lived worthy to 
be the lord and master of any other man. No man has 
a right to submit himself to the dominating posses- 
sion of another man, and to recognize the fact. Men 
scoffing at one another often say, " That fellow is a 
Beecherite," or a *^ Channingite," or a " Parkerite," 
but we all disavow these titles. We recognize in them 
an opprobrium. No man ever lived worthy to be the 
master of any other man; and certainly tlierc is no 
man that ever lived worthy to be a leader, a master, a 
lord of the whole human race. No man ever lived of 
capabilities adequate to be the master of all men, of 
all races and conditions of character; an cxam[>Ie 



Il6 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

and a law unto all Jews and all Gentiles, all white 
men and all black men, men of the first century and 
men of the nineteenth century, men of thought and 
men of action, poets and presidents, capitalists and 
wage-earners, men and women. Hero-worship there- 
fore disintegrates. It begets faction, necessarily be- 
gets faction, because no hero is great enough to be 
leader of all humanity. Even our political parties, 
when they forget the great principles that bind them 
together, and remember only individual leaders, be- 
come a prey to faction, which takes the place of pa- 
triotism, or even party allegiance. You cannot take 
the divinity out of Jesus Christ and leave an object 
worthy of universal reverence and universal follow- 
ing. 

Nor can you take the divinity out of Jesus Christ 
and leave the story of his life or the lesson of his 
teaching intact. For everywhere and always he was 
the subject of his own preaching. He proclaimed 
himself. You may tear out the Fourth Gospel from 
the covers of your New Testament, and fling it away; 
you may base your faith on the synoptic Gospels 
only, and still you will find Christ central — and 
Christ as the Lord and Master of the human race. 
You will find him in his first sermon preached at 
Nazareth pointing to himself and saying, ** I am the 
fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy of the 
coming Messiah." You will find him in the second 
sermon declaring, "I am the foundation; he that 
builds in obedience to me, builds on rock; he that 
does not, builds on sand." You will find him in the 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY, \\J 

third sermon pointing to himself as the One that shall 
come to judge the world. You will find him in the 
fourth sermon declaring of himself that he is the 
bread of life; and that he who would live must live, 
not by the teaching of Jesus, not by the example of 
Jesus, but by spiritual unity with Jesus the Christ. 
He makes himself the standard of duty; he has but 
one command: ^* Follow thou me." He makes him- 
self the promise of reward: "Where I am, there ye 
shall be also." He makes himself the comfort which 
calms the troubled soul: "Come unto me, and ye 
shall find rest to your soul." Oh, what man has in him 
centripetal force enough to hold in their proper or- 
bits all circling humanity, himself the central sun of 
all the nations and in all the ages ? This is what 
faith in the divine Christ gives us. Hero-worship 
bids us forget the Christ and be content with Jesus; 
bids us follow the son of the carpenter and deny the 
Son of God; bids us worship a man and know not the 
God whom he set forth to us. What? Does not 
Robert Elsmere know God? Yes! But the Squire 
does not: and Robert Elsmere knows him only be- 
cause he has learned of him from Christ before the 
divine Christ is rejected. Christian faith, the faith 
of your fathers, the faith that has inspired the church 
through all these ages, sets forth a God-man, a God 
manifested in man, a God coming down to the earth 
and living in human guise, dwelling among men that 
God may be made known to man. What is it the 
world wants ? What is it you and I most need in our 
deepest nature ? Is it a better man, a nobler type of 



Il8 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

humanity, a finer hero ? No ! no ! What we want is 
God. What the orphan world has ever been wanting 
is God. And w^hat this Gospel reveals is God: a God 
who has torn aside the veil that he may be seen; that 
we may come to see, and so may be brought to know, 
him. We ask for God, and hero-worship offers us a 
man. Pilate was the first prophet of the Religion of 
Humanity, when he brought forth the discrowned 
king and set him before a jeering multitude with his 
'' Behold the Man !" It is not the man Jesus, it is the 
Christ of God, who has won his way to the heart of 
humanity and given to it a victory-winning ally. 

II. In the second place, this Religion of Humanity 
blots the resurrection out of the Gospel and gives us 
but a cross and a tomb. I read from *^ Robert 
Elsmere " in his speech to the workingmen of East 
London : 

'* ' Ke laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of a 
rock, and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.* 
The ashes of Jesus of Nazareth mingled with the earth of 
Palestine — 

** ' Far hence he lies 

In the lone Syrian town, 
And on his grave, with shining eyes, 
The Syrian stars look down.* 

" He stopped. The melancholy cadence of the verse died 
away. Then a gleam broke over the pale, exhausted face — 
a gleam of extraordinary sweetness. 

** ' And in the days and weeks that followed, the devout 
and passionate fancy of a few mourning Galileans begat the 
exquisite fable of the Resurrection. How natural, and amid 
all its falseness how true, is that naive and contradictory 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY, II9 

Story ! The rapidity with which it spread is a measure of 
many things. It is, above all, a measure of the greatness of 
Jesus, of the force with which he had drawn to himself the 
hearts and imaginations of men/ '* 

The " fable of the resurrection " ! A grave, but 
no escape from it ! Death, but no revealed life 
victor over death ! What can the grave give 
you ? There is scarce one of you in this con- 
gregation who has not sat down at some time at 
the door of the tomb and listened for its message. 
What words had the grave for you ? It was a 
sacred message. It was a blessed message, and one 
you would not be without. It told you of all sacred 
memories ; it told you of blessed love ; it pointed 
you to the love of the past, full of radiance and of 
joy. But if you had hope, it was not spoken from 
the grave ; if you had faith, it was not spoken from 
the sod laid over the grave : for the grave has no 
message of faith, no message of hope. Hope comes 
from the angel who stood at the door of the 
grave after the resurrection when the stone was 
rolled away. This Religion of Humanity, which 
takes away our Lord and leaves us only an in- 
carnate hero, takes away the resurrection and 
leaves us only the crucifixion. It takes away a liv- 
ing power and leaves a memory. It takes Jesus 
from the cross, places him in the tomb, rolls the 
stone to the door, and goes away grief-stricken. 
The life of Jesus as it is ended by Renan, the French 
skeptic, by Hooykaas, the Dutch skeptic, by Edwin 



I20 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

Arnold, the English skeptic, ends as in " Robert Els- 
mere " — at the grave. 

It is very true that the Christian church has very 
often stopped at the cross. We sometimes speak 
as if that is the foundation of Christianity; but the 
Apostles did not stop there. If you will turn to the 
Book of Acts, you will find that all of the apostolic 
sermons dwell upon the resurrection as the funda- 
mental hope of Christianity ; that the Apostles 
founded their church on the story of the resurrec- 
tion ; and that the Christian church was born of 
faith in the resurrection. You will find the death 
and the resurrection are coupled together in the 
Epistles ; that when Paul speaks of him that died, 
he speaks in the same place of him that rose tri- 
umphant over death. What the world needs for 
its redemption is not a nobler past, but a living 
presence. That which this Gospel gives to us, that 
which our faith gives to us, is a living Christ, a 
risen Christ. The Religion of Humanity rolls the 
stone to the door and leaves it there. As it was 
Pilate that said, " Behold the man," so it was Pilate 
who put the seal to the tomb that it should not be 
rolled away. Pilate, who would give us a man for 
an incarnate God, would give us also a closed and 
sealed tomb for an open one. The power of Chris- 
tianity dates from the day that the Marys, think- 
ing their dear Lord was gone, came to find the 
stone rolled away and heard the message of the 
risen Saviour from the angels' lips, " He is not here ; 
he is risen ;" and then from Christ himself : " Go 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 121 

tell the disciples and Peter." The tomb has no 
message of inspiration. Inspiration comes from 
life, not death. You will observe, then, that if you 
take out of Christianity the doctrine of the resur- 
rection you take out its vital part. You may pluck 
out a miracle here and there ; you may think Christ 
did not walk on the water, or that he did not feed 
the ^N^ thousand, and still retain the heart and 
essence of the Gospel. But you cannot close the 
tomb of the dead Christ and leave him there, and 
not take out of the religion of Christ the very heart 
and life that has moved the world. This has 
brought man and God together for eighteen centu- 
ries. This true atonement has been wrought, not 
by something that occurred eighteen centuries ago, 
but by a living Christ, dwelling in the heart of his 
church, in the hearts of the children of men. 
Whatever denies this resurrection gives us for a 
living Christ an embalmed corpse ; for a hope and a 
power it would substitute a memory and a grief. 

III. This leads me to say, thirdly, that the Relig- 
ion of Humanity offers to us a law and an example 
— nothing more ; the Religion of Christian Faith 
offers us a divine power. 

Mr. Gladstone has eloquently sketched in a few 
words the power of the Christian church : 

** Christianity both produced a type of character wholly 
new to the Roman world, and it fundamentally altered the 
laws and institutions, the tone, temper, and tradition, of that 
world. For example, it changed profoundly the relation of 
the poor to the rich, and the almost forgotten obligation of 



122 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

the rich to the poor. It abolished slavery, abolished human 
sacrifice, abolished gladiatorial shows and a multitude of 
other horrors. It restored the position of woman in society. 
It prosecuted polygamy ; and put down divorce, absolutely 
in the West, though not absolutely in the East. It made 
peace, instead of war, the normal and presumed relation be- 
tween human societies. It exhibited life as a discipline, 
everywhere and in all its parts, and changed essentially the 
place and function of suffering in human experience. Ac- 
cepting the ancient morality as far as it went, it not onl}?- en- 
larged but transfigured its teaching by the laws of humility 
and of forgiveness, and by a law of purity even more new 
and strange than these." 

What was it that accomplished these things ? 
Galilean fishermen? An isolated Jew? A new 
philosophy? A new superstition ? No ! no ! What 
revolutionized the old world, brought down the 
temples of paganism and built out of their stones 
temples to the living God, emancipated the slave, 
new-created the ruined home, brought lust into sub- 
jection to love and set woman free from her horrible 
slavery, palliated war and prepared for peace, made 
the appetite the servant of the reason, made drink- 
ing-bouts dishonorable and education the preroga- 
tive of the common people — what accomplished 
these results v/as the power of the living God 
brought into the hearts of men; the power of a God 
made known to man in the man Christ Jesus. And 
that is a supernatural power ; a power above nature, 
above humanity, working in and through it and 
transforming it. When the personal love, the per- 
sonal presence, of a living, a dying, a risen Lord 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 1 23 

has been taken away from us, and the God whom 
he has revealed recedes again into the infinite dis- 
tance, and a heart-hunger for God takes the place 
of rest in him, and the fitful struggles of spiritual 
despair the place of the steady energy of a divinely 
nurtured spiritual life, where shall we look for a 
new aid to reanimate our courage and re-equip our 
unarmed spirits for life's warfare ? 

Once, in conducting prayers in the Inebriate Asy- 
lum at Binghamton, I read without comment the 
seventh chapter of Romans : " What I would, that 
do I not ; but what I hate, that do I." At the close 
of the service half a dozen men clustered around 
the desk and asked me where that chapter was. 
" That describes our condition exactly," said they. 
Yes, it describes the condition of all struggling 
humanity exactly. We know what the truth is. 
What we want is power to do that which we know 
we ought to do : power to control this tongue that 
speaks first and lets the tardy thought come after ; 
power to control this miserable vanity ; power to 
break down the walls of pride and prejudice ; power 
to make the animal in us servant of the spiritual 
and divine. Will law give this power? Law 
simply says. Thou shalt, but adds no power to 
the enfeebled muscle or the enervated will. Will ex- 
ample ? Sometimes example inspires, urging the 
soul to call out all its powers in emulation. But an 
example beyond unaided power to emulate discour- 
ages. Why should I continue a race when my com- 
petitor has already won the prize ? Will doctrine ? 



124 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

Doctrine is only a trellis up which the vine may 
climb if the vine be living. But the trellis confers no 
power. Life comes only from life. The power that 
moves the world is the power of personality. And 
when a Christless philosophy has taken from us the 
divine and sympathizing personality which has put 
courage into the hero's heart and a song into 
the martyr's mouth, when in lieu of a manifested 
God we are left a God guessed at, in lieu of a God 
dwelling in the human heart and making a human 
life victor over all powers of evil, we are given only 
a God whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, 
where shall we look for the power that won in Christ 
and has been steadily winning ever since in the bat- 
tle of his church ? It has been said by a recent 
writer of this school, a teacher of this Religion of 
Humanity, that Jesus Christ taught no new doctrine. 
Perhaps not. But he made real and vital an old 
doctrine, never before in human experience realized. 
He taught the doctrine embodied in his name — Im- 
manuel, God with us. He taught not merely that 
God is, — that was no new doctrine, — but that God is 
in the hearts of his children. And what he taught 
by his lips he manifested in his life. He showed the 
world a human life wholly dominated, in every 
thought and word and deed, by the Spirit of his 
Father, and therefore in every thought and word 
and deed manifesting in the flesh that Father's glory. 
What he taught and manifested, that he produced, 
and still produces, in his followers, — souls full of the 
Spirit of God, and therefore of goodness, and van- 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY, 12$ 

quishing ignorance, superstition, sin, as the evening 
lamp vanquishes the darkness of the night, by rays 
of sunshine borrowed from the sun. 

IV. And so, in the fourth place, this Religion of 
Humanity offers a temporal and a local religion in 
place of one that is as eternal and as universal as its 
divine Author. I will read once more. Robert 
Elsmere is explaining to his wife his position: 

" If you wish, Catherine, I will wait — I will wait till you 
bid me speak ; but I warn you there is something dead in 
me, something gone and broken. It can never live again 
except in forms which now it would only pain you more to 
think of. It is not that I think differently of this point or 
that point, but of life and religion altogether. I see God's 
purposes in quite other proportions, as it were. Christianity 
seems to me something small and local. Behind it, around 
it, including it, I see the great drama of the world, sv/eeping 
on, led by God, from change to change, from act to act. It is 
not that Christianity is false, but that it is only an imperfect 
human reflection of a part of truth.'* 

Christianity something small and local — that is the 
theology of Robert Elsmere; God so loved the world 
that he gave his only-begotten Son that whosoever 
believeth in him should not perish — that is the theol- 
ogy of the Gospels. A religion for a special time, 
for a special people, for a special need, but now to 
be merged in some new eclectic religion, a Christ 
who will do for England and America as Mohammed 
for Western Asia and Siddhartha for Eastern Asia, 
all being preparations for a new religion better than 
either and including all — that is the one conception. 



126 S/GJVS OF PROMISE. 

A Christ of God who is gathering to himself the 
hearts of all men, that when the days of trial and of 
discipline are ended, there shall be found standing 
before the throne, and before the Lamb slain from 
the foundation of the world, men of every nation 
and kindred and people and tongue, giving to him 
blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and 
honor and power and might, for ever and ever — this 
is the other conception. These are not the same re- 
ligions. They are not different phases of the same 
religion. They are not differing expressions of the 
same fundamental faith. They are irreconcilable 
antagonists. The theology of Robert Elsmere is not 
a Christian theology ; it does not preserve the essen- 
tials of Christianity and discard its accidents. The 
one gives us a hero-worship, the other a worship of a 
revealed and manifested God; the one a tomb and 
a sacred memory, the other a resurrection and a liv- 
ing Presence ; the one a precept and an example, the 
other a living Person and a perpetual Power ; the 
one a Christianity that is small and local, the other 
a Christ who is the Redeemer of the world. 

There will be some of you, perhaps, this morning 
who will question the wisdom of such a discussion. 
You will say, "' You have advertised * Robert Els- 
mere,' a very dangerously fascinating book." Well, 
for myself, I say frankly that I think the days of the 
Index Expurgatorius have gone by. This book will 
shake the faith of many ; but a faith that cannot 
stand shaking would better be shaken. You cannot 
preserve the faith of your children by keeping them 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY, 12/ 

in Ignorance of doubt and skepticism. At least that 
is not an experiment which I shall try on this con- 
gregation. I only ask you, as you read this fasci- 
nating story, as you reflect upon it, or as you think 
of the fascinating philosophy of which it gives such a 
dramatic and oftentimes beautiful expression, — I only 
ask you to remember what it takes away and remem- 
ber what it leaves you. It takes away a God manifest 
in the flesh, and leaves you a human hero. It takes 
away a living Saviour, and leaves you an entombed 
corpse. It takes away the power of God in human 
life, and leaves you a law, a hero, and a cross. It 
takes away a Christianity that is as universal as the 
love of God, and leaves you a human Christ and a 
Christianity that is local and temporal. 

Saint John saw the New Jerusalem descending 
out of heaven. That is Christianity. The barbaric 
peoples tried to build a tower of Babel, that by it 
they might climb to heaven. That is the Religion of 
Humanity. Will you take for your faith the tower 
of Babel, built up by man from earth, or the New 
Jerusalem, let down by God from heaven ? 



VII. 

THE AGNOSTICISM OF PAUL. 

"We know in part, and we prophesy in part: but when that 
which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done 
away." — i Cor, xiii. 9, 10. 

These words occur, as you well remember, in that 
famous psalm of praise to Love which constitutes one 
of the most eloquent passages in that most eloquent 
of writers, the Apostle Paul. He declares that knowl- 
edge is fragmentary, love perfect; science fragmen- 
tary, love perfect; theology fragmentary, love perfect. 
What he says here he says elsewhere, everywhere as- 
suming that a complete and comprehensive knowl- 
edge is impossible, not to be thought of. Sometimes, 
indeed, he seems to exalt it; but the text shows that 
he is always exalting spiritual experience and the 
knowledge that is born of spiritual experience — not 
scientific knowledge. In this very chapter he says, 
in a preceding verse, '' If I have the gift of prophecy, 
and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and 
have not love, I am nothing. And a little before — in 
the eighth chapter — he says ironically, ^^ Now as 
touching things offered unto idols, we know that we 
all have knowledge." And then with a change, as it 
were, of inflection, he adds: *' Knowledge puffeth up, 
but love buildeth up." 

12S 



THE AGNOSTICISM OF PAUL, 1 29 

But in all ages the church has acted on a different 
hypothesis. It has been assumed that we can have a 
complete and perfect knowledge of the universe. 
The very phrase, " systematic theology/' is a mislead- 
ing phrase. Theology — science of God. Systematic 
theology — systematic knowledge of God. The ant- 
hill undertaking to measure the garden ! The midg- 
ets on this littlest planet of one single small planet- 
ary system of this immense universe undertaking to 
measure Infinity, the powers and wisdom that per- 
vade the universe, and tell what it is and how it acts 
and all about it ! But this is what systematic the- 
ology has undertaken to do. It has undertaken to 
map out the character of God; to catalogue his at- 
tributes; to tell who and what he is; to tell what he 
must do and what he can do; to measure his wisdom, 
his power, his goodness. We are sure that there 
is a general beneficence operating in nature and life; 
though this is by no means so clear if one simply 
takes the natural phenomena of life. But do we 
know more that that ? Can we tell more than that? 
O, some one says, " Yes: we have the Bible; we could 
not without the Bible. Natural theology? No, that 
is inadequate; but we have revealed theology, and 
revealed theology makes clear to us the character of 
God.*' Does it? Is there any catalogue of God's at- 
tributes in the Bible? Is there any attempt to map 
out God's nature in the Bible ? The Bible writers 
were too reverent to imagine that they could lay a 
living God on the dissecting-table before them and 
practice vivisection on the Almighty. What is the 



130 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

Bible ? It i-s the record of the growing science of 
God in the human race. God touches us in nature, 
and we know that he is because he touches us there. 
God touches us in human experience, and we know 
something of him because he touches us there. And 
as human experience grew under the touch of God 
and recorded itself under the touch of God, that 
record was preserved, and we have in the Bible the 
growing knowledge of God in human experience. 

At a time when men knew nothing in nature but 
force, there dawned in the mind of one great genius in 
Egypt that there was righteousness, justice, rectitude, 
moral rule, in the Almighty power that underlies phe- 
nomena, and he brought out his message to the world 
that God is just. That is what Moses saw. When 
the Jewish nation had got no further than that, — 
the idea of a justice and righteousness in God, — there 
dawned upon the mind of a great Hebrew poet that 
there was love and tenderness and compassion in the 
Infinite Power, and he sang, " Like as a father pitieth 
his children, so God pitieth them that fear him.'* 
David had taken one step more. At a time when the 
whole nation lay under the harrow of oppression 
and was being broken into fine dust by it, there 
dawned in the heart and mind of another great poet- 
prophet that there was hope in God, and Isaiah sang 
of the " God of hope." And in a time when all life had 
died out of Palestine, all life had (died out of Greece, 
all life had died out of Rome, and there was no more 
but a mere mechanism in lieu of life, run on by the old 
momentum of the past, there dawned in the heart of 



THE AGNOSTICISM OF PAUL, I3I 

a great spiritual genius that God dwelt in the hearts 
of men, and Paul spoke of the inspiration of God. 
But neither one of them gives or pretends to give 
a comprehensive, adequate, and full portrait of 
God, as though one with a brush could paint his 
features. 

What do we know of human life — this life, right 
here where we are ? What do you know of yourself? 
I put it to you whether you are anything else than a 
continual series of surprises to yourself ; whether 
there does not come forth from your mind every day 
and every week something that you never found 
there before; whether, when a burden is laid upon 
you, you do not wake up to a power of carrying it 
that you never thought you possessed; whether, when 
a duty is given you which you hardly dare tackle, you 
do not have the capacity of muscular courage such 
as you never thought you possessed; and whether, on 
the other hand, when temptation assails you it does 
not bring out from you an evil and sin in you that 
you never dreamed you had ? You do not know your- 
self. You are getting acquainted with yourself 
gradually. And you do not know your neighbor; 
you do not know your husband; you do not know 
your wife; and we none of us know our children. All 
life is a continual series of surprises; and all our 
knowledge of one another and even of ourselves is 
fragmentary knowledge. 

I am satisfied that a great deal of the intellectual 
unrest of the present age grows out of the twofold 
error, — an attempt, first, to make a comprehensive 



132 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

and a complete systematic knowledge of life and eter- 
nity, and, secondly, an attempt to construct a religion 
out of that knowledge. I want to make it clear, if I 
can this morning, that neither of these things is 
possible, neither of these things is attempted by the 
Bible, neither of these things is to be attempted by 
ourselves; that all that we know is fragments; that 
we have the bits of the dissected mass, but that we 
cannot put them together and make a universal 
knowledge. 

What do you know of the material universe, to be- 
gin with ? I will tell you. You know phenomena 
where the universe impinges upon you; you know 
the point of contact, and that is all you know. What 
do you know of electricity ? Can any one tell whether 
it is force or matter, or what it is ? We know how in 
some respects it works. We know in some measure 
how to use it. But what it is, no man knows. You un- 
derstand why the planets revolve around the sun, and 
why the apple falls from the bough of the tree to the 
earth. It is owing to the attraction of gravitation. 
But do you know what is this invisible cord that holds 
the earth to the sun, the invisible cord that draws down 
the apple from the bough ? Do you know what vege- 
table life is? There is a seed, and here is a diamond. 
We call that living; we call this not-living. What is 
the difference ? We know that if we plant the seed in 
the right kind of soil and under the right kind of in- 
fluence something will grow out of it; and that if we 
plant the diamond nothing will grow out of it. We 
know the result; but who can make out what is the 



THE AGNOSTICISM OF PAUL. 1 33 

mystic power in this seed that enables it to gather 
substance from the juices of the earth? Does any man 
know what animate life is ? There lies a child fast 
asleep; there lies the body of a child dead. What is 
the difference? You know this: that from that latter 
sleep there is no apparent awaking; that it will be 
followed by corruption and decay. But what more 
do you know than that ? Can you state what has be- 
come of the soul in sleep? Can you tell what is to 
become of the soul in death ? Do you know even 
what matter is ? You know hardness, softness, color, 
form; but the philosophers are not yet agreed among 
themselves whether there is any such thing as mat- 
ter, or whether matter is a mode of motion and a 
form of force. 

Now, take a step farther. We know — I shall not 
attempt to draw the line sharply between what we 
can know and what we cannot — but we know in the 
spiritual realm, as we know in the physical and ma- 
terial realm, phenomenally. We know — where the 
spirit-life touches us; but we do not know the ab- 
solute reality of things. We know in our own life 
only where the outward manifestations of the human 
universe impinge upon us. We know that fire burns, 
cold freezes, electricity shocks; and so, in the in- 
ward experiences of our soul, we know when soul 
touches soul. We know the thrill that goes through 
us in love. We know the fire that flames in us at 
wrong. We know the experiences that come from 
human companionship. And some of us know the 
higher experiences that come into the soul when the 



134 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

Divine Spirit touches our spirit. We have known 
strength that has come we know not whence. We have 
known comfort that has come we know not whence. 
We have known the touch and inspiration and help 
and presence of God. That much we have known. 
But when we seek to give that an analysis, to ex- 
pound, to explain, — in the very hour in which we 
turn our thought upon the phenomenon that we would 
examine, it fades fromx our vision, and it is gone. No, 
I will not question the tempest, nor the fire, nor the 
earthquake, and I will not question even the still small 
voice; for when I ask curiously what it is, it ceases to 
speak, and I am left alone. O God, thou art not in 
the heavens above, and thou art not in the universe 
abroad; thou art here within my heart, and most here 
when I do not look for thee here. He spoke truly 
who said, " If you ask me who God is, I cannot tell 
you. If you do not ask me, I know very well." 

Turn then to human life and question that. Phi- 
losophy is ready with its various schemes for offer- 
ing a comprehensive and complete conception of 
human life. There is materialism ready to tell you 
that you are only a body, and all your soul and spirit 
are only forces generated by the body, as electricity 
by the battery. Idealism is ready to tell you that the 
body has no existence at all; you are only a mind; 
you are dreaming, asleep; the things you think you 
touch, the things with which you think you come 
in contact, are only the phantasmagoria of a dream. 
Each is a system of life, and nobody practically 
believes either of them. Again, how shall we in 



THE AGNOSTICISM OF PAUL, 1 35 

our philosophy adjust free will with law? One 
school declares that every man is free, may do what 
he will; he is under no law; there is no Great In- 
telligence, no order: human life runs wherever in- 
dividual man will carry it. Another school allows 
no freedom of the will, no liberty in the individual: 
all men are part of one great mechanism, all men are 
puppets that play their parts on the stage as some 
unknown pulls the strings, and when the curtain falls 
all is over. Each is a theory of the universe, and no- 
body really believes either of them. 

How shall we account for sorrow in the world ? I 
do not know. If you do, take comfort from your ac- 
counting. When sorrow comes and knocks at your 
door, and you open it, and black-robed it looks in 
upon you out of its sad deep eyes, and you say to it, 
** Why have you come into the world ?" it is mute, it 
gives you no answer. *^ Why have you gone to other 
houses and other homes?" Mute, it gives you no 
answer. But ask it what lesson you can learn from 
it, and it will reply, " There is no teacher like grief." 
If we question it as to what it is doing in the world, 
what end it has in the universe, what part in God's 
great scheme — that, no man can understand. But 
there is no teacher like grief if you will bow before 
it and say, " What lesson can I learn out of my sob- 
bing heart ?" 

Or the deeper mystery of sin — where does it come 
from ? Of course, pert philosophy is ready with its 
answer. Here stands number one: It came from 
Adam. Here stands number two: It came from the 



136 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

Devil. And here stands number three: It came from 
imperfect and inadequate development; it came from 
an animal and earthly nature. But no one of them 
tells what to do with it. Why is that ? Number two 
tells you it is the necessary accompaniment of a free 
will; number three, the necessary incident in the pro- 
cess of evolution; number one, the necessary fruit 
of a fall in past ages; and number four, the neces- 
sary means to the highest good. But none of them 
tells you what to do with it. The wrestler comes and 
lays hold of you. What shall you do ? Ask him out 
of what darkness he came ? No matter how he came! 
Ask him how he came to be sent here? No matter 
how ! Summon all the muscle in you; gather up all 
the power you can put into a great struggle, all there 
is in a strong will, and then cry to the heavens above 
that God may give you greater strength than you 
possess, and wrestle and throw him and get your 
foot on him. And thefi ask him how he came, and 
perhaps he will tell you. When you stand in the fore- 
front of the battle, and the shot and shell are flying, 
it is no time to discuss where secession came from, 
and rebellion; it is time to do duty in battle now, and 
debate its origin and constitutionality afterwards. 
No, we do not know the womb of sin, nor the cradle 
of sin; but there is not one of us that does not know 
enough about the nature and the power and the 
work of sin to gather up all the forces in our nature 
to battle with it. 

Future life — do you know about it ? Can any man 
give us a scheme of the future life ? You have seen 



THE AGNOSTICISM OF PAUL. 137 

the body fading away. You have seen the cheek 
grow paler and the breath grow shorter and the voice 
grow feebler and more attenuated; and you have seen 
faith and hope and love undimmed, unweakened, un- 
impaired; — why when that faith and hope and love 
have twined around my faith and hope and love, why 
when the body disappears out of the open door, the 
same light in its eyes there was before, the same love 
in the heart there was before, the same smile on the 
lips there was before, — why shall I think the soul has 
perished because I have lost the power to see it? 
But when I ask whither it has gone, and what it is 
doing, and where it is, and whether I shall see it 
again, I ask the grave in vain: it gives me no answer. 
I ask the stars in vain: they shine on in silence. And 
if I come to this revelation of immortality through 
Jesus Christ our Lord, I find words that are full 
of warning; I find words that are full of hope; 
but little more. I find the declaration that where 
Christ is, there the loved one shall be also. I find 
the vision and the picture which imagination has 
painted. I find some views and suggestions of what 
shall be the glory of an eternal life when the bond- 
age of earth is taken off, and some hint of what 
shall be the awful effect of death when the soul itself 
is dissolved because of corruption and wickedness; 
but I find information neither as to what the life or 
what the death is. Wise theologians stand before 
me telling me what God must do if he is just, and 
what God should do if he is merciful, and what God 
will do to the human race. I wonder sometimes at 



138 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

the marvelous, assuming irreverence of humanity 
that gathers itself together and sits on the judgment 
throne and beckons and says to God Almighty, 
" Stand thou there and give account of thyself. We 
have come to judge thee and to say what thou must 
do and what thou must not do, what thou oughtest 
to do and what thou oughtest not to do," — a very 
travesty of the hour when we shall stand before Him 
whose right alone it is to judge ! 

As it is impossible to form a system of theology 
that shall present with any perfectness the nature of 
God or the nature of his government to the human 
soul, so also that is in no wise necessary for relig- 
ion. In " Robert Elsmere" it is said, *^ The world needs 
a new religion ;." and the authoress of "Robert Els- 
mere" proposes to make one. She is not the only one 
that is engaged just now in making a new religion. 
The orthodox have been at work making a religion for 
a great many years; but they are no longer, it seems, 
to have a monopoly of the business, for other men 
have come in to undertake to do it also. The agnos- 
tic is going to make an agnostic religion, and the 
materialist is going to make a materialistic religion, 
and so on. Go to ! let us make a religion. As though 
philosophy ever could or ever did make life ! As 
though science ever did or ever could make a vital 
thing! *^ Come, Science, make a flower." "If you 
give me a flower, I will pick it to pieces and 
tell you what it is made of; but I cannot make a 
flower." " Come, Science, make us a man." " I can 
study mental phenomena and tell you something of 



THE AGNOSTICISM OF PAUL, 139 

what the man is. I can with scalpel and dissect- 
ing-knife and microscope examine all the tissues of 
the body and tell you what the physical organism is. 
But I cannot make a man. " Come, Science, make 
us a new society.** Well, there are some men that 
are ready to take the job, to sweep off from the slate 
all the experience of past ages, and out of hand 
to make a new social organism. But we do not trust 
them. " Come, Science, make us a language." It 
cannot even make a language. It can take a language 
which men already use, and give us its laws and its 
rules ; or it can make a Volapuk, which is the "uni- 
versal language" that nobody ever uses. But it can- 
not make a living language. The intellect does not 
make things. The intellect analyzes and examines 
things : but they already exist. Theology never 
made religion. Did astronomy make the stars ? or 
botany, the- flowers ? or psychology, the mind ? or 
grammar, language ? or political economy, states, 
nations, societies ? As little did theology make re- 
ligion. The religious life is a life of love, of faith, of 
hope ; and it is the business of science, not to build a 
foundation for religion, but to analyze and examine 
and tell us what religion actually is; not to blot out 
of existence the vision of faith, but to study it ; not 
to strike with dumbness the song of hope, but to 
investigate it ; not to tell us love is onl}^ a little 
rapider throbbing of the muscular heart, but to 
interpret the power that binds all souls to one 
another, because it binds all souls to God. Astron- 
omy changes : the stars shine on with the same 



140 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

light with which they shone under the Ptolemaic 
theory. Botany changes : the flowers have the 
same color and the same fragrance. Social theories 
change : but human life is to-day the same as it was 
nineteen centuries ago. So philosophies and theolo- 
gies change : but reverence before God, humility in 
the thought of God, hope looking into and through 
the grave, seeing the angel there, and love reaching 
out clasped hand to love, — that is to-day what it was 
when Mary saw the angels in Christ's tomb ; what it 
was when Christ gave John and Mary to each other's 
keeping. 

We know very little, — very, very little. What 
of it ? I am in a narrow cell. Shall I beat my- 
self against its stone walls, or rejoice in the little 
ray of sunshine that streams through its narrow 
window, in the assurance it gives me that there 
is glorious sunlight outside ? I stand on a small 
oasis. Shall I put myself upon the part of it 
where the sun will beat down upon my head, and 
where the hot breath of the sirocco will pour upon 
me with its blastings, or shall I turn back and find 
the shade of the palm and drink from the spring 
of hope that rises forever in all human hearts if they 
will but drink of it ? I am cast away on a small isl- 
and. All around me rolls the great ocean, whose do- 
main I know not, whose farther boundary I cannot 
see. Sometimes the fog rolls in thick, and then I 
see nothing; sometimes it lifts, and I look across the 
blue a little farther : but far as I may look, I see but 
a little way, and immensity and ignorance lie beyond 



THE AGNOSTICISM OF PAUL. I4I 

I will not go and stand upon that shore and spend 
my days and hours in repining because I do not com- 
prehend the round globe of which it is a little part, 
but I will find some shipwrecked brother upon its 
coast, hungry, naked, needy, and in giving him some 
help I will find comfort and joy. 

For though we know in part, and we prophesy in 
part, there remain for ever and ever these three: 
Faith— casting its sunlight into the darkness, Hope 
— springing eternally in the desert. Love — beckoning 
eternally to service. 



VIII. 
THE DOGMATISM OF PAUL. 

*' For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that 
which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done 
away."— I Cor. xiii. 9, 10. 

If by a theologian is meant one who has, or pro- 
fesses to have, a systematic, measurably perfect and 
complete philosophy of God or of God's government, 
then Paul was no theologian. He neither had 
nor professed to have, he neither taught nor 
professed to teach, any scheme of the universe, 
any plan of divine government, or any accurate, com- 
plete, and comprehensive philosophy of God. " We 
know in part '* may be said to have been the motto 
of all his teaching. It was in a true sense partial and 
fragmentary. He taught certain truths which men 
needed. He did not undertake to teach truth as 
though it were a comprehensive and a complete thing 
which could be finished and ended. But although he 
only knew in part, what he knew he knew. He was 
an agnostic in this — that he professed his knowledge 
partial, and himself in ignorance, respecting many of 
the problems which perplex the human mind. But re- 
specting those things concerning which he did teach, 
he taught with great positiveness. He was not a 



Plymouth Church, Sunday morning, February 24, 1889. 

142 



THE DOGMATISM OF PAUL, 1 43 

vender of doubts and questionings. He was not a 
teacher of hypotheses and opinions. He was not 
even an investigator and an inquirer, pursuing by a 
scientific process truth, and disclosing it to others as 
by his investigations he arrived at it. He v/as a 
teacher of profound, vital, positive convictions. If 
dogmatism is positiveness in religion, then Paul was 
a prince of dogmatists. But the knowledge which he 
claimed to possess was a knowledge not based on 
scientific inquisition and inquiry. It was based on 
personal life. It grew out of his own vital experience. 
If you will compare, for exam.ple, the teaching of 
Socrates and the teaching of Paul, you will see this 
radical difference between the two : Socrates is al- 
v/ays the questioner; he is always asking for the 
truth. He goes through the forest as a guide that 
has never gone before, studying the trees, studying 
the lay of the land; looking to see the moss upon the 
bark of the trees, that he may know which is the 
north side; trying to get a view of the heavens now 
and then, that he may guess where the points of the 
compass lie; or climbing some hill or tall tree, that he 
may get a better outlook, — leading because he under- 
stands these witnesses to the path better than his fel- 
lows. Not thus Christ. Not thus Paul. Paul's tes- 
timony is, indeed, " We know in part," but it is also, 
** We know." He leads through the forest as one 
that has passed that way before. He leads as one 
who knows absolutely the path along which he treads, 
although all upon the right and all upon the left is 
an unknown territory. 



144 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

After having told you last Sunday morning that 
Paul teaches no system of theology, I am not going 
to attempt to tell you what was his theology. Nor 
am I going to tell you in one short half-hour all the 
thills Paul knev/. But I am going to try to put be- 
fore you on the authority of Paul's own language 
four things concerning which Paul said positively, 
"I know.'\ 

And, first, he declares, in the seventh chapter of 
Romans, " I know that in me '* — that is, in my flesh — 
"there is no good thing.'* Paul knew that he was 
personally a sinner against God — against God's law, 
and against divine light, and against his own ideal 
manhood, and against truth and righteousness ; and 
he looked within to get this knowledge. I do not 
find in Paul's Epistles any philosophical discussion 
as to the nature of sin. I find very little in Paul's 
Epistles as to the origin of sin. 

I know that modern theologians have sometimes 
said that Paul rested the doctrine of redemption on 
the doctrine of the Fall, and therefore they ingen- 
iously argue that if you take the doctrine of the Fall 
in Adam out of the Bible you take the doctrine of re- 
demption in Christ out of the Bible, and all Paul's 
system of theology falls to pieces. 

But, in point of fact, only in one place in all Paul's 
Epistles does he explicitly declare a belief in the fall 
of man in Adam : and that is the fifth chapter of 
Romans, in a passage in parenthesis, — and every stu- 
dent of language knows that you may leave out all 
the parenthetical clauses and the force of the argu- 



i 



THE DOGMA TISM OF PA UL. I45 

ment remains unchanged.* There are other intima- 
tions, indeed, of the Fall as current belief and doc- 
trine in his time ; but Paul does not build his faith in 
redemption on any historic doctrine of a fall back in 
some past age. He builds it on personal conscious- 
ness : — I know that in me there is no good thing. I 
know that the evil that I would not I do, and 
the good that I would I do not. I know that I am 
a battle-ground in which contending passions and 
impulses fight for mastery, the higher ideals and 
the lower appetites battle with each other, and 
every now and then at least the higher ideals are 
trampled under foot. I know that in me are ani- 
mal passions and appetites of which I have not yet 
the mastery. I know that I need a Divine Captain, a 
Helper, a Strength, outside of myself. When I look 
at my own soul, when I think of my own experience, 
when I consider my own life, I cry, O wretched man 
that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of 
death? It is only when I look out of myself and see 
some one else stronger than I am, and stronger than 
the world, — it is only then that I cry, Thanks be to 
God which giveth me the victory ! 

And when Paul takes other men and human his- 
tory into his ken, when he considers the question of 



* In that chapter Paul is arguing the universality of redemption. 
The Jews believed that the Messianic kingdom was a Jewish king- 
dom. Paul, to prove that it includes pagan as well as Jew, — is a 
world-kingdom, — reminds his readers that redemption is as wide as 
sin, and that sin began not with Moses but with Adam, — is a race- 
fact, not a national fact. 



146 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

the human race, still he believes mankind are sinners 
because he sees in all mankind the same conscious- 
ness that he sees in himself. In that first chapter of 
Romans he simply pictures life as all men could see 
it, and then he says, " You know that is a true picture 
of Roman life." And in the third chapter of Romans 
he takes out of Jewish history the inspired portrait- 
ures of Jewish character. He does not argue ; he 
does not debate ; he does not enter into discussion : 
he simply holds the picture up, and he says, " You 
know that is a picture to be ashamed of,'* and every 
conscience answ^ers, " We do so know." 

And not only was this consciousness in Paul, — " I 
am a sinner," — it was a growing consciousness. He 
did not come into it in his conversion. He did not be- 
gin with a conviction of sin, in the outset. He had 
started for Damascus. He was going to persecute the 
Christians. He was going to do it because he thought 
the Christians were heretics. He was the first of 
heresy-hunters ; he was going to put all heresy down ; 
and he was just as conscientious about it as heresy- 
hunters have been in all ages of the world from that 
day to this. And when the light appeared, and he fell 
to the ground, when the voice addressed him and re- 
vealed to him his own devout consciousness, and said 
to him, ** Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ?" he 
answered boldly, "Who art thou. Sire?" And when 
the answer came back, "I am Jesus of Nazareth, 
whom thou persecutest," still the answer was simply, 
** Well, tell me what you want of me." That is all. 
There was no casting himself on the ground. There 



THE DOGMATISM OF PAUL. 1 47 

was no crying, ** God, be merciful to me, a sinner." 
There was no sense of sin. It was simply this : "If 
you are Lord and Master indeed, tell me what you 
will have of me, and I will begin to do it." But 
thirty years had gone by,— thirty years lived in the 
presence of Christ ; thirty years of fellowship with that 
divine ideal ; thirty years of struggling with tempta- 
tion, struggling for a higher life than conscience had 
ever given to him, — here is what he then wrote : 
" This is a faithful saying and worthy of all accepta- 
tion, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save 
sinners, of whom I am chief. Howbeit, for this cause 
I obtain mercy, that in me, first, Jesus Christ might 
shew forth all long-suffering for a pattern to them 
which should hereafter believe on him to life ever- 
lasting." After thirty years of Christian experience 
he said, " The only reason I can imagine why Christ 
should have saved such a man as I am, is that the 
church might know, through all future time, that if 
such a sinner as Paul could be saved, there is hope 
for anybody." 

This, then, is the first thing Paul knew. He knew 
that he was personally a sinner, needing forgiveness 
of sins, needing help. 

II. The second thing Paul knew was human woe 
and suffering. " We know," he says, " that the whole 
creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together un- 
til now." Most of us know that we are sufferers, and 
that other men are sinners ; Paul knew that he was a 
sinner, and that other men were sufferers. To him 
personally sin was a consciousness, and human suffer- 



148 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

ing a consciousness ; and as he entered into the one 
by personal experience, so he entered into the other 
by the power of sympathy with mankind. 

In the legend of Siddhartha, which Edwin Arnold 
has turned into beautiful poetry, the story goes that 
the Prince was kept carefully in his palace, and from 
all knowledge of woe and pain. He should never 
know that there were tears, that there was sickness, 
that there was death. But the very wind brought 
him the story of the world's woes ; his quick ear 
heard their music on the ^olian harp, and they sang 
to him a wail, and so he got his first knowledge of 
human sorrow. He wanted to enjoy and see the world, 
and his father issued a decree that all things that 
give offense or pain should be cleared from his path. 
But somehow it happened that one poor, wretched, 
miserable, palsy-stricken, blind beggar had been left 
by the wayside ; the Prince saw him, looked on him, 
and turning to his attendants said, " What, are 
there such sights as this, such sounds as this, such 
men as this in the world ? I will turn back and think 
of it." And he went out again, and again the path had 
been cleared for him that he should see no pain. But as 
he went, one suddenly fell down struck by mortal 
disease, and he saw the anguish and death. Then far- 
ther on he saw a funeral procession and a corpse borne 
to its burial, and he turned to his attendants, and said, 
"What, do all men know sickness? Are all men 
finally borne to their death ? Do heart-throbs come 
into all hearts ? Do tears come into all eyes ?" And he 
Said, *^ I will go back and think of it." And he went 



THE DOGMATISM OF PAUL. I49 

back ; he pondered ; at last he said, " I cannot live 
in joy while my fellow-creatures are living in suffer- 
ing." And from the arms of his dear wife, from the 
arms of his parents, and from all the strong attrac- 
tions of his home, he went forth that he might study 
the problem of human suffering, that he might put 
his own shoulder under the burden that was bearing 
down on all the human race. So it is that men's 
noble natures come to know that the world groaneth 
and travaileth in pain together until now. So Paul 
turned his back on all the opportunities of quiet 
study, and on all the promotion and the fame that 
beckoned him, in order that he might share with and 
cheer the sufferings of humanity. So Christ turned 
his back upon the glory he had with the Father, and 
came to earth that he might drink the cup of sorrow 
to its very dregs. So God knows his children; knows 
that we are dust; enters into our experience, and real- 
izes our griefs and our struggles. 

This is the second thing Paul knew. He knew 
himself to be a sinner. He knew the world to be 
wrestling with anguish and with sorrow, and he dared 
to know that and to enter into it. Sometimes with 
recreant heart we would turn back from life's battle; 
we would shut ourselves up in a Siddhartha's palace; 
we would have death and poverty and suffering stay 
from us. But would we really ? Is there one of us 
here to-day that, looking out into life and into human- 
ity's wet eyes, would cry to God, " Let my eyes be 
dry;" knowing that sorrow entered all other homes, 



ISO SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

would cry, '* Let me find some power that will shut 
sufiering out of my home "? 

I have spoken of these two knowledges of Paul 
because I think they are fundamental to the other 
two. Nor do I think it possible to enter into the 
other two except one enters in through this door of 
personal sense of sin and sympathetic consciousness 
of sorrow and suffering. 

III. In the third place, Paul knew God. " I know," 
he says, " whom I have trusted.'* Let me be not mis- 
understood. Paul did not know about God. Paul 
does not discuss the mystery of the Trinity. Paul 
does not catalogue the attributes of God. Paul does 
not go round about him and furnish a survey of his 
character. Paul does not undertake to give the psy- 
chology, so to speak, of God. But he knew God. 
" I know whom I have trusted," he said. He had a 
personal acquaintance with God. This is just what 
no Christless philosophy ever gives, or, so far as I 
can see, ever professes to give. The most that pagan- 
ism has ever done has been to do that which Paul 
himself defined and described in his speech to the 
Athenians, — paganism seeks after God if haply it 
might find him. That is the paganism of the past; 
and that is our paganism of the present. What is 
the declaration of Herbert Spencer respecting the 
Unknown and the Unknowable but a feeling after 
God if haply he may find him ? What is the decla- 
ration of Matthew Arnold respecting the stream of ten- 
dency, the ^' Power not ourselves that makes for right- 
eousness," except a feeling after God if haply he may 



THE DOGMA TISM OF PA UL. 



151 



find him ? What has Frederic Harrison to tell us 
about the God in humanity, the divine in men, but a 
feeling after God if haply they may find him ? Then 
at last there comes the declaration of the materialist 
to those searching for him that he is not to be known. 
All talk about him, says Huxley, is sounding brass, 
tinkling cymbal. This is the end of the seeking. 

Now, over against that form of agnosticism w^hich 
either feels after God or frankly declares that he is 
not to be known, Paul puts his assurance of faith — it 
occurs again and again in his Epistles: — " I know 
whom I have trusted.*' It is the keynote to his 
teaching. 

There are two ways, I think, of coming to a certi- 
tude respecting Jesus Christ and his right to speak to 
us respecting the character of God. One way is to 
take the miracles and see to what these miracles 
point; to take the story of his birth, — is there ade- 
quate evidence of it; to take the story of the resur- 
rection and investigate and see if by the laws of testi- 
mony it is sufficiently substantiated. Summon your 
jury, put your twelve men here behind the rail. 
Now come, attorney for Christianity, present your 
claims; summon your witnesses: let them tell their 
story, inquire into their character for truth and 
veracity. Gentlemen of the jury, true verdict render 
according to the evidence: Did Jesus of Nazareth 
rise from the dead ? Is the evidence sufficient ? 

That is one way ; the other is to take up these four 
Gospels, and read the story of that life, look into the 
face of that person, come into fellowship with that 



152 S/GATS OF PROMISE, 

character. This first. And when I have done this, 
and Christ has come into personal relations with me, 
and I have seen what he is, what his teaching, what 
his life, what his nature, I am sure that no First Cen- 
tury could have produced such a One. I am sure 
that no Roman Empire nor any Jewish Pharisaism 
could have given forth such a nature. I have come to 
know him — not something about him. And when I 
have come to know him, when I have come to have 
personal spiritual contact w^ith him, it is no longer, on 
the one hand, marvelous to me that he should have 
come into the world as no other mortal can come ; 
nor should I care to discuss the question whether he 
did or no. It is no longer wonderful to me that such 
a man should have poured forth virtue at every step 
he took, and power should have gone out from him 
without his consciousness ; nor do I very much care 
whether they did or not. For now my faith in Christ 
is not a faith resting on his works; it is faith in his 
nature, his personality. 

"Yes," you say, "if I could have seen Christ, if I 
could have felt the pressure of his hand, if I could 
have looked into his eye, if I could have leaned with 
John on his bosom, I could have this personal faith 
in a personal Christ. But I have never done that.** 
Nor did Paul. Paul's knowledge of Christ was not 
dependent on the vision of the eye nor on the hear- 
ing of the ear. Not only that, but he tells you em- 
phatically he would not have relied on it, nor greatly 
cared for it, if he did have it ; " Henceforth know we 
no man after the flesh; yea, though we had known 



I 



THE DOGMATISM OF PAUL. 153 

Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we 
him no more.'* There is a power in personality that 
is greater than all other powers, and a knowledge of 
personality that is more fruitful than all other knowl- 
edge. And it does not depend on the seeing of the 
eye or the hearing of the ear. The influence of a 
great personality is not buried in the grave. It does 
not die when the flesh drops ofl^. Luther leaves the 
stamp of his mind on the Protestant church. Wash- 
ington leaves the stamp of his personality and patri- 
otism on the American people. We live every day on 
the faith in men that we do not know. I deposit to- 
day a letter in the post-oflice, with a bank bill in it, 
and I know it will pass through a great many hands 
and reach its destination probably in safety. Why ? 
Because I have faith in human nature. I put my 
money in the bank, though banks do fail sometimes 
and cashiers emigrate to Canada; yet I have confi- 
dence in human nature. I put myself on board an 
ocean steamer, although I know mariners are careless 
and sometimes drunken ; I have confidence in human 
nature. Not in what the eye has seen; not in what 
the ear has heard; not in what the hand has handled: 
but faith in the great good Lord and in what he has 
put into man, — in the conscience, in the fidelity, in the 
truth, of an invisible spirit of man. Is it strange, 
is it inconceivable, that I should have like touch 
with the invisible Spirit of God ? There are to-day, 
and there have been in the world's history, more men 
and women to bear witness to the touch of Christ's 
spirit and the reality of God's life in the soul than 



154 SIGA'S OF PROMISE. 

men to bear testimony to the existence of Martin 
Luther, Raphael, Cromwell, or Abraham Lincoln. 

If, indeed, I have no sense of sin I shall not come into 
this personal contact with and the personal knowl- 
edge of God; and if I have no sense of human woe I 
shall not come into any personal contact with Him 
who is redeeming the world from its woe. Self-con- 
ceit never sees God, and selfishness never sees God. 
You are a little child; you do not know your mother 
very well. Do not sit down in your room, take your 
moral philosophy and study the law of moral obliga- 
tion, nor a phrenological chart of your mother which 
she had taken last year by a traveling phrenologist. 
Go down in the kitchen and work with her, try to 
save her from some of her cares, do her errands for 
her, live in fellowship with her, learn of your mother 
by working with her and sharing with her. O, you 
children laugh at me. Do you think, you say, I do 
not know as much as that? No; I do not. I do not 
think there is a child in this house who is not wise 
enough to know that to know Mother is to work for 
Mother and work v^ith Mother. But there are chil- 
dren of greater growth in this house who do not know 
that the way to know God is to work with God, to 
do God' will, to suffer for him, to go down into life 
where humanity is wrestling with suffering, take its 
tears, beseech a share in its burdens, enter into its 
life, join in its redemption. 

IV. The fourth thing that Paul knew I am not go- 
ing to enlarge upon this morning, for the clock ad- 
monishes me. I will simply state it. Said he : "We 



THE DOGMA TISM OF PA UL. I S 5 

know that all things work together for good to them 
that know God.'* He knew redemption- 
There are some of you to whom these two sermons 
will seem needless. Your faith is not disturbed, 
your heart is not perplexed, your intellect is not 
shattered; the faith of your fathers and your mothers, 
the faith that was taught you in your childhood, the 
faith that you learned from the New Testament, is 
strong and rich in you. There are some of you that 
have gone up the Mount of Beatitudes with the 
Twelve, and the skies are blue above, and the birds 
are singing all about you, and the voice of the Mas- 
ter speaks to you, and you hear him well, and you 
wonder that there are any that doubt. But there are 
some of you that are camping at the foot of another 
Mount, that is clothed in darkness and is unapproach- 
able. And the thunder is in your ears, and the light- 
ning is flashing, dazzling your eyes. Go groping 
your way, if need be, through the darkness, through 
the doubt; for the same God that sat on the Mount 
of Beatitudes, with the starry blue above and the 
sun all around about and the birds singing, sat also 
on the top of the other Mount which men came to 
only through the thick clouds and darkness. And 
above the clouds and beyond the darkness is God. 

When that ship on which Paul was shipwrecked 
had been long driven by the tempest and reached at 
last the edge of an unknown shore, and heard the 
sound of the waves beating upon the rocks, they cast 
four anchors out and waited for day. If there are 
any of this congregation that have long been storm- 



156 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

tossed, that have spent a night of darkness, that are 
still in uncertainty, that look out into the future and 
hear only the sound of breakers, to whom all about, 
around, seems full of doubt and pain, and only ship- 
wreck and death before, — to such I give this day four 
anchors. Throw them out and stay yourself by them. 
The knowledge of sin, — you can be sure of that; 
the knowledge of your felIow-being*s sufferings, — you 
can enter into that; the knowledge of God revealed 
within yourself, — you can have that; and the knowl- 
edge of his redeeming work in the world, — that may 
be yours also. 

Four anchors to windward: sin, suffering, God, 
love : and then we " wait for day." 



IX. 
THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION. 

** And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this 
rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it."- — Matt, xvi. i8. 

Christ had come very nearly to the close of his 
Galilean ministry. He had been preaching for about 
a year, and the twelve disciples had been accompany- 
ing him, listening to his preaching, doing a little 
preaching themselves, and gradually learning the 
truth which he had come to proclaim. He had taken 
them apart by themselves for more close individual 
religious instruction. He pursued the Socratic 
method. He asked them to what conclusions they 
had come as the result of what they had seen and 
heard during this year's companionship with him. 
He asked, " Who do men say that I am ?" And the 
apostles reported various answers: "Some say that 
thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others, 
Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.*' Then he said 
unto them, **But who do ye say that I am?" And 
Peter, who was never slow to speak, answered, per- 
haps as spokesman for the rest, " Thou art the Christ, 
the son of the living God." To this Christ replied, 
" Blessed art thou, Simon, son of Jonas; for flesh and 



Plymouth Church, November 6, 1887. 

157 



« 



IS8 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father 
which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee that 
thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my 
church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
it." 

In this somewhat enigmatic utterance, then, Christ 
indicates what is the foundation of his church. The 
Protestants have said. The foundation is the doctrine 
which Peter had just proclaimed. Peter said, " Thou 
art the Messiah, the Son of the living God;'* and Prot- 
estants very generally (not universally) have said, 
"This is the foundation of the Christian church — the 
doctrine of the divinity of Christ; any church which 
is founded on this doctrine is sound; any church 
which repudiates this doctrine is unsound. This is 
the test.*' The difficulty about that interpretation is, 
that it does not interpret. It rubs off from the slate 
that which Christ had put on it, and puts something 
else in the place. Some interpreters have even gone 
so far as to say that Christ said, " Thou art Peter,'* 
and then pointed to himself and said, " Upon this 
rock I will build my church." The word Feter^ as 
you know, means rock. What Christ said was this: 
" Thou art a rock, and on this rock I will build my 
church;" and to say that Christ said, " Thou art a 
rock, and on something else I will build my church," 
is not to interpret Scripture; it is to deny it and sub- 
stitute something else in the place of it. 

Our Roman Catholic brethren, and some in the 
Episcopal Church, have, on the other hand, supposed 
that Peter personally was the foundation of the 



THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION, 1 59 

Christian church: "Thou art a rock: on this rock I 
will build my church." They have said that Christ 
made Peter, or -at least the apostles, primates in the 
Christian church; that he gave them supreme au- 
thority, and that he conferred upon them the right 
to transmit that authority to others; that it has come 
down in a long succession^of ordinations to the pres- 
ent time, and that those who have received this apos- 
tolic ordination, transmitted from generation to gen- 
eration, are the true successors of the apostles, the 
true founders of the church, the true preachers of 
the Gospel, and alone entitled to administer its sac- 
raments. But surely this is a very large edifice to 
build on a very small foundation, a very large de- 
duction to draw from a very narrow premise. Christ 
says nothing about any successors of Peter. He 
gives to Peter and the Twelve no right to transmit 
to others whatever measure of authority he trans- 
mitted to them. Nor is there any indication any- 
where in the New Testament that they ever exercised 
such authority. In fact, the apostle who probably 
ordained more ministers than all other apostles put 
together was not himself in the apostolic succession, 
— the Apostle Paul. There is nothing to indicate 
that he ever received ordination from the Twelve, and 
much to indicate that he did not. And when Peter 
undertook to exercise authority over him, he says, 
" I withstood him to his face." If Peter was the first 
Pope, Paul was the first Protestant; and we would as 
soon follow the primacy of Paul as tlie primacy of 
Peter, if we have to choose between the two. 



l6o SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

Now, there is a third interpretation of this passage, 
and it is that which I wish to set before you this 
morning, not for polemical or controversial or even 
theological purposes, but for direct practical and 
spiritual ends. It is not on Peter as a man, nor on 
Peter as the first of a long line of popes and primates, 
that Christ builds his church, but on Peter as a type 
of humanity; not on the doctrine which Peter had 
proclaimed, but on the experience which had been 
wrought in the heart and life of Peter, transforming 
him. 

Look for one moment at the text: " Simon, son of 
Jonas.*' He was not a rock, he was shifting sand, a 
wave of the sea; of all the apostles, the one who had 
the least stability in his character. It was he who 
said, " Lord, let me come out to thee on the sea," 
and who, the moment his feet touched the wave, 
cried, ^^ Lord, I am perishing; save me!'' It was he 
who said, " I v/ill never deny thee," and rushed into 
the court of Caiaphas with bold front and audacious 
heart, to turn traitor — coward traitor, too — and deny 
his Lord with oaths. It was he who was the first to 
preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, and yet when the 
hierarchy came from Jerusalem he was frightened 
and began to draw back, and refused even so much 
as to eat with them. Peter a rock ? Peter was a 
wave of the sea; Peter was a quicksand. Nay, Simon 
was, — not Peter. And what Christ says to him is 
this: " Thou, Simon, son of Jonas, thou shifting man, 
thou wayward man, thou weakly man, thou impetu- 
ous man, thou man that rushest into danger without 



THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION. l6l 

counting the cost, thou audacious man, acting first 
and thinking afterward, I will make a rock of you, 
even of you." And if he could make a rock of Peter, 
he could make a rock of anybody. 

What Christ says, then, is not, "On you and your 
successors in ecclesiastical office I will build my 
church;" not, "On what you have said I will build 
my church;" but, " On you as a man transformed by 
the power of an indwelling Christ, on you as the 
tjT-pe of a long line of humanity growing broader 
through the sweep and range of history, humanity 
transformed and changed by the indwelling of my 
own Messianic life, I will build my church." This is 
the interpretation of the text afforded by its setting. 
This is also Peter*s own interpretation. He has 
given it to us, and let me read it to you. I read from 
the second chapter of the First Epistle General of 
Peter: 

"Wherefore, laying aside all malice, and all guile, 
and hypocrisies, and envyings, and all evil speak- 
ings, as new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of 
the word, that ye may grow thereby : if so be ye have 
tasted that the Lord is gracious. To whom coming, 
as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but 
chosen of God, and precious, ye also, as lively stones, 
are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to 
offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by 
Jesus Christ." 

It is a very mixed metaphor, but these apostles 
were so full of the truth that throbbed in their 
hearts and burned on their lips that they did not 



1 62 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

mind rules of rhetoric, nor, much, even rules of logic. 
That which was in Peter's thought, and which he 
wished to impress upon the minds of those whom 
he addressed, was: first, this church is a vital church, 
a live church, a moving church ; and, second, it is a 
stable church, a rock-like church. So he said. It is 
built upon living stones and of living stones. First 
it is a building of stones, and then a priesthood : he 
mixed his metaphors, but he carried the twofold 
truth into the hearts of his hearers — a living church, 
yet stable — built on a living Christ. 

And as this is the interpretation of the text and 
the interpretation of Peter himself, so it is the inter- 
pretation of history. Look down along the line of 
the history of the Christian church. Who have been 
its teachers, leaders, prophets, and apostles ? Who 
its great men, — men that have been transformed by 
this power of an indwelling God in the heart ? Moses, 
by no means meekest of men when he struck that 
blow that left the Egyptian dead upon the sand, — 
Moses, reared and brought up in all the learning and 
schools of the court of Egypt, yet appointed to lead 
Israel out of Eygpt and to bear on his broad shoul- 
ders, with almost infinite patience, the burden of a 
nation through forty years of wandering ; David, red 
of face, with auburn hair, full of blood, impetuous, 
sensuous by nature — his one great sin a sin of sen- 
suality — yet transformed and becoming the poet- 
king, not only of his own nation but of all future 
time ; John, son of thunder, wishing to call down 
fire from heaven on the Samaritan village, — John, am- 



THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION, 1631 

bitious and self-seeking, who went, almost in the 
very last hours of Jesus, to ask for the first office in 
his kingdom, — John, the first office-seeker of the 
Christian church, transformed into the preacher of 
purity, unselfishness, and love ; Paul, brought up 
at the feet of Gamaliel, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, 
given the Gospel trumpet whereby he was to awaken 
the nations for all time and call them out into the 
liberty of the children of God ; Augustine, sum- 
moned out of sinfulness to become the great theolo- 
gian of the future ; Luther, called from the monas- 
tery to become the national emancipator ; Wesley, a 
high churchman, made to be the teacher of a Gospel 
that should run beyond the bounds of all denomina- 
tions ; your own pastor, bred in the school of an iron 
Puritanism, that he might lead the nation out from 
bondage unto law into glorious liberty wherewith 
Christ makes free. There is scarcely one man in all 
the history of the church, that has ever been a leader 
of the church, a founder of the church's thought, a 
builder of the church's life, that has not known the 
transforming power that was shown in Peter's case, 
that has not been changed, manifestly changed, evi' 
dently and before the eyes of all mankind changed^ 
from the current and course of his life in the cradle 
and in childhood, that he might lead others out from 
that state of pupilage wherein he was himself born. 

I. Following up, then, this interpretation of the 
passage, let me say, first, that Christ has come into 
the world, not, as is often said, to found a religion, 
but to bestow life. A religion has its creed, its ritual. 



164 s/GjVs of promise, 

rts priesthood, and its hierarchy. Christ uttered no 
creed, prescribed no ritual, and organized no hier- 
archy. Christ came, he tells us himself, that he 
might give life, and that out of that life all things 
might grow that the world needs, of institutions, 
whether of thought or of organism. He came not to 
give a creed to men, not to formulate a system and 
then put it down over them, but to stir and stimu- 
late them with intellectual life, set them on the track 
of truth, inspire them to pursue it, and through all 
the clash of debate and discussion to go on their way 
until, by the very stroke of the flint against the 
steel, the spark of light should emerge. He came 
not to establish rules for the guidance of men, put 
them in their uniform, tell them how they should 
march and countermarch. He came to inspire them 
with a moral life of faith and hope and love, out of 
which their own moral life and conduct should 
blossom forth. He came not to give them a priest- 
hood, nor a hierarchy, nor a liturgy, nor any of the 
paraphernalia of a church, but to breathe upon them 
and brood in them a great spiritual life, that should 
phrase itself in all varied forms of utterance, from 
the swinging censer and the kneeling worshiper be- 
fore the magnificent altar of the great cathedral to 
the unuttered prayer of the Friends' meeting-house. 
He came that he might brood mankind. He came 
that he might live among men — not merely during 
one short guesthood of thirty years, and then go 
away as though his work was done : he came that 
through the open door of their highest needs he 



THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION, l6j 

might enter into human life and dwell in it ever- 
more, transforming man by his own infinite person- 
ality. As throughout the ages great prophets and 
teachers, the great personalities of history, have 
brooded over the church, the nation, the community, 
or the age, transfusing them with their own life, 
so through all the ages Christ has been dwell- 
ing in men, filling them with his own life, trans- 
forming them, making of Simon a Peter. Then, 
out of all these gathered men, transformed by his 
own indwelling, he builds a church that shall never 
perish. For this is the Church of Christ — not a 
hierarchy, not a school of philosophy, not a volun- 
tary organization brought together for particular 
worship or particular doctrines or teaching, but the 
great gathered assembly of all those that have felt 
the pulse-beats of the divine life that was and is ever- 
more in Christ Jesus. I sometimes think the best 
view of human depravity is in the depravity of human 
language. This word ecclesiastic — how foul it has 
made itself in human history ! How hateful are the 
associations that gather about it! How at least we 
who are Protestants of the Protestants disavow and 
repudiate and condemn it ! Yet, for a moment go 
back to the starting-point of church life, and see 
what this word ecclesia means. It means those who 
are called out from worldliness and selfishness and 
sin, into a higher and diviner life. Every man who 
has ever heard that call and answered it, — whether 
there be tiara on his head and scepter in his hand or 
no, whether he be robed or not, whether he stand in 



1 66 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

pulpit and before the altar or sit in the pew, — if he 
has heard that call of God, and hearing has answered 
it and come forth into a higher and diviner life, he 
is, in the New Testament thought, a part of the 
great ecclesia — the called fo7'th. In the Israelitish 
economy there were two silver trumpets, and when 
both those trumpets were blown the children of 
Israel all gathered together, and that great gathering 
of the children of Israel, brought together by the 
blowing of the silver trumpets, was the Jewish ecclesia^ 
the great assembly, the called-together. Through- 
out all the centuries two silver trumpets have been 
blowing — duty and aspiration; and all those who, 
hearing the silver call of duty and the silver call of 
aspiration, have gathered together that they may 
follow where God leads them, make the church of 
Christ. 

The flowers got into a debate one morning as to 
which of them was the flower of God ; and the rose 
said, " I am the flower of God, for I am the fairest 
and the most perfect in beauty and variety of form 
and delicacy of fragrance, of all the flowers." And 
the crocus said, " No, you are not the flower of God. 
Why, I was blooming long before you bloomed. I 
am the primitive flower ; I am the first one." And 
the lily-of-the-valley said, modestly, ^* I am small, but 
I am white ; perhaps I am the flower of God." And 
the trailing arbutus said, " Before any of you came 
forth, I was blooming under the leaves and under 
the snow. Am I not the flower of God ?" But all 
the flowers cried out, *^ No, you are no flower at all : 



THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION, 1 6/ 

you are a come-outer/* And then God's wind, blow- 
ing on the garden, brought this message to them : 
'* Little flowers, do you not know that every flower 
that answers God's sweet spring call, and comes out 
of the cold, dark earth, and lifts its head above the 
sod, and blooms forth, catching the sunlight from 
God and flinging it back to men, taking the sweet 
south wind from God and giving it back to others in 
sweet and blessed fragrance — do you not know they 
are all God's flowers ?" All they that take this life 
of God, and, answering it, come forth from worldli- 
ness and darkness and selfishness, to give out light 
and fragrance and love, they are God's flowers. 

II. This transforming power of a regnant, per- 
sonal, indwelling Christ, this it is which must make 
the unity of the church of Christ. How many more 
years shall we have to read our New Testament be- 
fore we light on the words, often repeated there, 
'^ One in Christ Jesus" ? We have tried to make our 
Christian church one in hierarchy and in priest- 
hood ; we have tried to make it one by a process of 
repression and exclusion ; we have tried to make it 
one by giving up here and cutting off there those 
that did not agree with central authorities ; and we 
are still trying to do it, even in Protestant Christen- 
dom. It has never succeeded. And we have tried to 
do it by a common creed, by some common symbol 
of doctrine, sometimes elaborate and sometimes 
simplified. We have thought, if we could only get 
our creed small enough and short enough and 
brief enough and simple enough, then we could all 



1 68 S/GJVS OF PROMISE, 

be one in doctrine and in creed ; but the longer we 
have tried it the worse we have got on. The more 
that men are made independent in thought, the more 
they differ in opinion, and every different opinion be- 
comes the center of a different sect. We differ in our 
doctrinal opinions, and so we make an Arminian 
Church and a Calvinistic Church and a Lutheran 
Church. We differ in our conceptions of church 
government, and so we make a Presbyterian Church, 
an Episcopal Church, and a Congregational Church. 
We differ in our opinions of administration ; and so 
we make a Pedobaptist Church and a Baptist Church. 
And two or three years ago the Dunkers, of Penn- 
sylvania, differed, I believe, their old theology saying 
it was not right to wear double buttons on a coat 
because it was worldly, and the new theology men 
thinking double buttons were permissible, — the result 
being two sects of Dunkers, a single-button sect and 
a double-button sect. The gambling soldiers that 
stood at the foot of Christ's cross were more rever- 
ent, I sometimes think, than we Christians have been. 
They would not rend Christ's seamless garment, and 
we, wdth our strifes and our divisions over doubtful 
points of theology, over questions of the future or 
the past, over questions where man came from or 
whither he is going — questions that never touch the 
great fundamental question of life — AVhat he is, what 
he should do, and what he may take from the God 
that is above himi — we have rent this garment of 
Christ until it is a thing of mere shreds and patches 
in our Protestant Christendom. 



THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION, 1 69 

No ! no ! the united church of Christ cannot be 
wrought by a hierarchy, and it cannot be wrought by 
a creed. It is to be wrought by life. We shall yet 
be one; nay, we dare say are one, in our common ex- 
perience and in our common allegiance. If I were 
permitted so to do, and should invite a Roman Cath- 
olic priest into this pulpit, and he should accept the 
invitation and preach to you, the fact would be tele- 
graphed all over the country Monday morning. But 
I can ask Mr. Faber, who was an Episcopal clergy- 
man and became a Roman Catholic priest, to give us 
his hymn to sing for the first one, and the Unitarian 
Adams to give us his hymn for the second, and the 
Calvinistic Watts to give us his hymn to sing for the 
third, and no one thinks strangely of it. For when 
we begin to speak of creeds and doctrines we divide, 
but when we come into that realm of experience out 
of which all creeds and doctrines have grown, we are 
one in our faith, one in our personal experience, one 
in Christ Jesus. Paul puts the order of unity thus: 
" One Lord, one faith, one baptism." We never shall 
get the one common symbol of church life, whether 
it be creed or ritual, until we have got unity in our 
Christian experience, and worship one God of en- 
during and infinite love and mercy; and then we 
shall find it very easily. So long as one half of the 
nation was fighting against the other half of the na- 
tion on the question of allegiance, there must have 
been two flags; but when the war was ended and the 
nation was made one, the old secession flag was 
buried, and the one symbol of a national unity floated 



I/O SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

over the whole nation. The symbol must always fol- 
low the reality. It is in vain we hammer our creeds 
together until our hearts are one. 

It is this indwelling power of a Christ transform- 
ing men and women, making them over again, brood- 
ing them with his own great forth-putting person- 
ality, — it is this which is the power of the church. It 
is this which has preserved it through all the ages 
and through all the various forms it has taken on. 
Prophets, apostles, teachers, law-givers, men of schol- 
arship, men of eloquence, have come and gone. They 
have entered on the stage, filled us w4th admiration 
and with love, and gone again, out into the future. 
But the church has remained, not weakened by their 
death, with glory undimmed by their seeming decay. 
For the church is the body of Christ, and Christ 
dwells in it. The gates of death shall not prevail 
against it. It was founded on a transformed nature, 
— on Simon turned into a Peter. That was the rock. 
But the fortress across the valley w^as filled vrith a 
great multitudinous army, and the gates were flung 
open, and out from that fortress the tribes have 
streamed in constant and undying succession. First 
in the dire, relentless, and cruel persecutions of the 
pagan power; the new-founded church survived them. 
Then in the incursion, subtle, of paganism into the 
very forms of doctrine and forms of worship of the 
Christian church itself, converting that which was 
Christian into that which was pagan. Still, the Chris- 
tian church survived that incursion. Then, setting 
this interior paganism against the very life of the 



THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION, I /I 

Christian church, and endeavoring, by persecution 
more relentless and more bitter than any that overt 
and public paganism had employed, to throttle the life 
of the church. That also the church survived. And 
to-day, doubt and skepticism and v^orldliness — doubt 
of the very fundamental elements of faith, doubt of 
God, doubt of immortality, doubt of the Bible, doubt 
of the Christian truth in every aspect — surround and 
environ and threaten it. And still the church will sur- 
vive; for the church is the body of Christ, and Christ 
is dwelling in his church, and the church in which 
Christ dwells is as immortal as Christ himself. I am 
not — at least I do not mean to be — any blind eulogist 
of the church. I do not forget its imperfections, its 
coldnesses, its waywardnesses, its follies, and its faults. 
But, recognizing them all, I still appeal to you that 
are not in the church of Christ, and that have often, 
perhaps, cast your satire or your scorn upon it. Out 
of what workshops come there greater moral forces 
to-day than out of the churches of Christ, as they 
are in the United States ? Blot them out of existence 
to-day; make every pulpit dumb, make silent every 
worshiping sound going up to God; drape all the 
chimes with black, that they ring no sweet music to 
the ear on Sabbath morning; lock every sanctuary 
door; and how long would you be able to generate 
the forces that can stay intemperance, Mormonism, 
ignorance, superstition, and vermicular and political 
corruption ? 

It is an indwelling Christ that is the power of the 
church. The church lived before the Bible; the 



172 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

church will live after the Bible. Before Genesis was 
written, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob lived; before 
the Ten Commandments were written, Moses lived; 
before the Psalms, David; before the prophets, Jere- 
miah and Isaiah; before the Gospels, Christ; before 
the Epistles, Paul. The Bible is the record of the 
divine life wrought in the heart of the early church, 
— the Old Testament church and the New Testament 
church. And the church will live after all books have 
moldered to dust. There seem to me to be some peo- 
ple in the Christian church who think that God has 
forgotten it, that he has gone out from it, that he is 
an absentee. They dare not move where the provi- 
dence of God leads, because they have no faith (so 
it seems to me) in a living God, that lives in his 
church to-day. The Christian church is still the 
body of Christ. In the Christian church the Spirit 
of Christ still lives, moves, guides, directs, controls. 
When the pillar of cloud and fire came to its resting- 
place in the wilderness, the tabernacle was put up, 
and the tabernacle remained there until the pillar of 
cloud and fire moved on, and then the tabernacle was 
to be taken down and to follow. When, in the provi- 
dence of God, the pillar moves forward, guiding hu- 
man thought, guiding human life, to a higher and 
broader and larger life, it is in vain for any man to 
cry " Halt !" Spurgeon himself, grand man as he is, 
and grand work as he has done, cried in vain, "Leave 
the tabernacle where it was in the sixteenth century!' 
When the light and life of God move on, and the 
great current of believing humanity follows, the tab- 



THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION, 1 73 

ernacle, if it could stay there, would cease to be the 
tabernacle of the living God. 

I have tried, in these words, to bring you to an in- 
terpretation — one interpretation — of that supper- 
table about which we are presently to gather. It is 
not a mere memorial service. It stands not merely 
pointing back to the past. It stands as a symbol and 
witness of the divinest truth of Christianity, — a living 
Christ in the hearts of living men. As you individu- 
ally and personally eat this bread and drink this 
wine, remember what Christ said: " Except a man eat 
my flesh and drink my blood, he hath no life in him." 
It is only as we take Christ into our own inner selves, 
as v/e make him bone of our bone, sinew of our 
sinew, flesh of our flesh, that we are truly his and he 
is truly ours. When Christ came to the tomb where- 
in Lazarus lay buried, and the stone was rolled away, 
he did not preach him a sermon about physiology, 
anatomy, and human life. He said, *^ Lazarus, come 
forth 1" — breathed life into him; and, so inspired, 
Lazarus came out into the light again. As you take 
this symbol, take the living Christ himself — not the 
memory of him, not the hope of him, but, through the 
memory and through the hope, the sense of the per- 
sonal, transforming Christ. 

Members of Plymouth Church, whom it is to be 
my privilege to serve for a little while here, I would 
fain, in this your first autumnal communion, bring 
the truth of that communion service to you as a 
church, urge you — nay, thank God that, without urg- 
ing, you have already inspired and suggested to my 



174 SIGJVS OF PROMISE, 

thought — that you make this in very truth a church 
of God; that you hold in your heart of hearts, as a 
church, not merely the record of the divine life once 
lived, but the vital, beating life that now lives; that 
this church may be the body of Christ, and that all 
its life may bear witness that Christ still lives in it 
and leads it. 



X. 

THE POWER OF THE KEYS. 

" And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven : and 
whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and 
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." 

Matt, xvi. 19. 

In this and the preceding verse Christ tells us what 
is the foundation of his church, and in whom the au- 
thority in it is vested. His declaration respecting the 
foundation is involved in the statement, " Thou art 
Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church." 
His declaration respecting the authority in that 
church is involved in the statement, ^^ I will give 
unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven : and 
whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound 
in heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth 
shall be loosed in heaven.*' In a sermon preached 
November 6, I gave an exposition of the first of these 
two declarations, explaining that the foundation of 
Christ's church is not Peter personally, nor Peter as 
the representative of a hierarchy, but Peter as a type 
representing all those whose characters have been 
transformed by a living faith in a living Saviour. To 
Peter as such a type he gives authority in his church. 

Before entering very briefly on an exposition of the 
meaning of this confessedly enigmatical declaration 

Plymouth Church, January 29, iSSS. 

175 



176 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

I must frankly notify you that this exposition is un- 
like that which you will find in either Roman Catho- 
lic or Protestant commentaries. It has whatever dis- 
advantage attaches to novelty. It must be scrutin- 
ized with the suspicion to which all novel interpreta- 
tions of the Scriptures are justly subjected. But in 
scrutinizing it I ask you to lay aside, as far as may be, 
all prejudices and predilections, to forget all that art, 
myth, and theological controversy have put into your 
minds respecting the " power of the keys," and to en- 
deavor to stand with the Twelve to whom Christ first 
uttered the enigma, and read it, if not as they under- 
stood it, at least in a way that shall not be inconsist- 
ent with their understanding. 

In order to do this we must first get the meaning 
of his words, phrase by phrase, noting the following 
unquestioned facts : (i) The key was in the East a 
symbol of authority, sometimes made with a long 
crook to hang around the neck ; hence the phrase in 
Isaiah, " The government shall be upon his shoulder.'* 
So the keys are worn by the English housekeeper, 
dangling at her waist, not merely for convenient use, 
but also as a symbol of her ofiice. Giving the keys, 
therefore, is giving the insignia of authority. (2) 
The phrase " kingdom of heaven " is rarely if ever 
used in the New Testament, and never, I think, by 
Matthew, to signify a state of future blessedness ; it 
is the state of allegiance to God upon earth. Hence 
Christ's preaching that The kingdom of heaven is at 
hand; hence his declaration. The kingdom of heaven is 
within you ; hence his parables, likening the kingdom 



THE POWER OF THE KEYS. 1 77 

of heaven to an estate left by an absent lord in charge 
of his steward. What Christ here, then, confers is 
authority in the life of allegiance to God, authority in 
the church of God on earth. (3) The accompanying 
promise is not who^o^v^r thou shalt bind and loose, 
but tvhatsotv&r thou shalt bind and loose ; it applies 
to things, not to persons. There is absolutely no hint 
whatever here to justify the hierarchical claim and 
legendary fiction that Peter has a key to the gate of 
the Celestial City, and may admit or exclude whom- 
soever he will ; the promise is a promise of authority 
in the church of God over actions, not over individ- 
uals. (4) To h'nd and to loose is not equivalent to re- 
taining and forgiving sin ; it is equivalent to prohib- 
iting and permitting actions. The words are so used, 
not only in rabbinical literature, but in the New Tes- 
tament. " The woman," says Paul, " is hound by the 
law to her husband so long as he liveth, but if the 
husband be dead she is loosed from the law of her 
husband." So again, "Art thou bound nnto a wife, 
seek not to be loosed : art thou loosed from a wife, seek 
not a wife.'* Binding and loosing relate to the impo- 
sition of, or the deliverance from, obligation. What 
Christ says, then, is this : I give you power in the 
Christian life, so that whatsover you hold to be obli- 
gatory, and whatsoever you lay aside as no longer 
obligatory, your action in so doing shall be ratified 
and confirmed. (5) Finally, this promise is made, 
not to Peter as an individual or as the head of a hier- 
archy, but to Peter as a type of a soul transformed 
by faith in a living Redeemer. The same promise is 



178 S/G.VS OF PROMISE. 

made to the Twelve in the eighteenth chapter of Mat- 
thew (verse 18), and there under circumstances and in 
connections which make it clear that the prom.ise 
was made to all Christ's disciples. This declaration, 
then, which has been so often regarded as the cor- 
ner-stone of a great spiritual despotism, I believe to 
be the Magna Charta of individual liberty — the con- 
ferring of liberty, and of all the authority and all the 
responsibility which liberty involves, upon the indi- 
vidual child of God. I can best confirm and eluci- 
date this interpretation by some illustrations and ap- 
plications of it. 

I. God has bestowed the keys of the kingdom of 
nature upon man. In the day in which he created 
man, he bade him have dominion over the fish of the 
sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, 
and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing 
that creepeth upon the earth. To man, in his igno- 
rance and his incompetence, he gives the key of a uni- 
versal dominion, and bids him enter upon the earth 
and take possession of it. As one is put into a house 
with many doors, all locked against him, and is given 
a bunch of keys and bid to find his way to the scat- 
tered and secreted treasures, so God put humanity 
into the w^orld, setting man housekeeping, and bid- 
ding him discover for himself the wealth which was 
stored up for his use. There were gold and silver 
and iron in the hills; there was the potent fertility of 
myriad infant seed-growths in the soil ; there was 
lightning in the clouds to run his errands, and, 
tamed and domesticated, to do the work of illumina- 



THE POWER OF THE KEYS. 1 79 

tion for him ; there was a great giant chained in the 
water, whom the fire would at once set loose and yet 
harness to do man's bidding. But all these treasures 
were under lock and key, and God fitted no key to 
any lock. Through the long ages of ignorance and 
barbarism he has kept an oppressive silence. He has 
left man to grope his way toward civilization and all 
that civilization brings with it. " Have dominion !" 
he cries to Adam in the garden. ** I have dominion!'* 
replies the child ; "how shall I tame the lightning, 
master the sea, pierce the mountain, and compel the 
reluctant earth to yield up to me its treasure-store?" 
'* I cannot tell you how," is the reply. " I give you 
the keys ; discover for yourself." It is an awful re- 
sponsibility, but it is a magnificent trust; and though 
man has been long in finding his way to the secreted 
treasures, modern civilization bears its witness that 
the trust which the Father reposed in his child has 
not been reposed in vain. Long and slow and pain- 
ful has been the process. But the process itself has 
been the making of a manhood to which all civilization 
is witness, and which is worth far more than all else 
which civilization has brought. 

II. In like manner God has given to each commu- 
nity the keys of political dominion and authority; he 
has not given these to one race for another race, to 
one class for another class, to hereditary kings or aris- 
tocrats for the common people. He has given them 
to man as man. The doctrine of self-government 
does not rest on the notion that the many are wiser 
or better than the few ; it does not rest on the false 



l80 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

assumption of the infallibility of democracy. Vox 
populi^ vox dei is not true ; it was the voice of the peo- 
I pie that cried, ** Crucify him, crucify him!" The doc- 
trine of self-government rests on this divine basis 
which God has laid ; namely, that God has given to 
man, as man, the keys of the kingdom; to man, as 
man, the responsibility of finding out what are the 
laws of social order, as what are the laws of nature : 
and this is a responsibility from which he cannot 
escape, which he cannot lay off upon another. 

But did not God give moral laws to the race t Did 
he not reveal the laws of social order in the Ten Com- 
mandments, though he did not reveal the laws of 
steam and electricity ? God did, as chosen King of 
the Jews, act as their Law-giver ; but he would not 
even take this office of terrestrial kingship till he had 
been elected to it by the suffrages of the people."* Nor 
was the theocracy a despotism — not even a divine 
despotism. There were representative assemblages 
elected by the people to make their laws, and judges 
chosen by them to execute their laws, and, with 
rare exceptions, the penalties were enforced, not by 
divine providence or miraculous interposition, but by 
the action of the people. The authority which God 
exercised as king he exercised at the people's request, 
and even this authority he passed over in successive 
fragments, and, so to speak, by successive abdications, 
until the whole political and civil power of the nation 
were vested in the people themselves. But he never 
enacted what can properly be called laws, or at least 

* See Exodus xix. i-8. 



THE POWER OF THE KEYS, l8l 

Statutes, for the human race. The Ten Command- 
ments are really ten great principles. No penalty is 
attached to any one of them. They are counsels 
rather than commandments, principles rather than 
edicts or statutes. They are proposed for guidance, 
not imposed for law. As in the beginning, so now, 
God does not interpose by definitely inflicted penal- 
ties to punish the thief for his stealing, the murderer 
for his killing, or the rake for his adultery. These 
laws of life are made clear, but men are left, either by 
their individual or their community action, to obey 
or disregard them at their will. 

Thus God gives to the human race the keys of po- 
litical administration. We do not want the burden 
of them; we try to rid ourselves thereof, but always 
with disastrous results. With what disastrous re- 
sults let the histories of Rome, Venice, Italy, and 
France tell us. Ruskin and Carlyle would take 
these keys of political responsibility and give them to 
kings. Men have tried the experiment, and the result 
has been a line of Caesars, Bourbons, Tudors, and 
Stuarts. Sir Henry Maine would take the keys from 
the people and give them to aristocratic lords. Men 
have tried that experiment; the result is written in 
the history of Venice in the sixteenth century, of 
France in the eighteenth, of Ireland in the nineteenth. 
The Pope, and some Protestant popes, would take the 
keys from the people and give them to a spiritual 
aristocracy. Men have tried that experiment; for 
result see Italy, Spain, and the South American 
republics. There are not wanting Americans who 



1 82 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

would take the keys from the people and give them 
to the Anglo-Saxons. Ask the Chinaman, the In- 
dian, and the Negro how this violation of the divine 
law works. Mankind is not fit for self-government. 
That is true. But mankind are better fitted to gov- 
ern themselves than any portion of mankind, however 
selected, are fitted to govern any other portion of 
mankind. Democracy rests on the fundamental 
truth that man as man — not royal man, nor aristo- 
cratic man, nor priestly man, nor Anglo-Saxon man, 
but man as man — was made in the image of God, and 
to man as man are given the keys of political, as of 
natural, dominion. Whenever, wherever, and how- 
soever this divine order is violated, the result is al- 
ways disastrous, whether the imperial power which 
idleness, cowardice, or self-distrust substitutes for a 
brave acceptance of the responsibility of the keys be 
a Caesar in Rome, a Bourbon in France, or a boss in 
America. 

III. In a stricter sense the church of Christ may be 
said to represent the kingdom of heaven on earth, 
and the keys of this kindom, the keys of the church 
of Christ, are given, not to the Pope or priesthood, 
Protestant or Papal, but to the entire Christian dis- 
cipleship. The church is a Christian republic ; and 
whenever the great body of disciples attempts to rid 
itself of the responsibility of the keys which God has 
laid upon it, and passes that responsibility over to 
a hierarchy, whatever its description, disaster and 
death ensue. 

As the foundation of the Christian church is laid 



THE POWER OF THE KEYS. 1 83 

upon men's souls transformed by the transforming 
power of God, in vacillating Simons made into rock- 
like Peters by God's indwelling, so the authority in 
Christ's church is vested in the whole body of those 
thus transformed. To them belongs the responsibil- 
ity, with them is intrusted the liberty, because in 
them dwells the life of Him who is alone Lord and 
Master. We are continually looking for some law of 
government, of worship, and of life which shall rid 
us of responsibility. But God steadfastly refuses to 
give it to us, and as often as we toss the responsibility 
off he thrusts it back upon us. 

See how constantly this is illustrated in the history 
of Christ's dealing with his disciples. They come to 
him for a constitution of the church, for the organiza- 
tion of a hierarchy. Who is greatest, they say to him, 
in the kingdom of God ? We may easily imagine the 
contest : Peter claims precedence because he has 
first confessed Christ, and James because he is the 
Lord's brother, and John because he is a** son of 
thunder," and Judas Iscariot because he is lord high 
treasurer and carries the bag. But Christ puts all these 
claims aside and says in effect, *^ In my kingdom there 
is no other law or rule than this : He who serves 
most is chief and highest." They come to him for a 
ritual. Teach us, they say, how to pray. But he will 
give them no ritual, — thrusts back upon them the re- 
sponsibility of framing their own petitions. What, 
he says to them in effect, do you desire ? is it not food 
for body and mind and spirit? is it not guidance in per- 
plexity and deliverance from the Evil One? is it not 



1 84 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

forgiveness of sin when you fall into sin ? Very 
well. After this manner pray ye ; carry these, your 
universal wants, to God in the simplest language ; 
this is the only liturgy, the only law of worship: Give 
us this day our daily bread ; forgive us our tres- 
passes ; lead us not into temptation; deliver us from 
evil. They come to him for a theology, but he will 
bestow upon them no creed, not even so short and 
simple a creed as the Apostles' : Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and 
strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. Love is 
Christ's creed, frankness his liturgy, and service his 
hierarchy. Christ puts the keys of government, of 
worship, and of life into the hands of his disciples, 
requires them to assume the responsibility and to 
find their way to government, to liturgy, and to life 
for themselves. 

IV. But the kingdom of God, which is in nature, 
in the state and in the church, is most of all in the 
individual conscience and life. To each soul person- 
ally God gives the keys of his own destiny and bids 
him unlock life's closed doors; puts in his hands the 
rudder and bids him steer his bark; gives him the 
tools and bids him model his own character. This is 
the solemnest fact of all, for this is an undivided and 
unshared responsibility. I may throw off upon 
others the blame for the failure of state and the sins 
of church; but for my own decisions respecting my 
own life I am alone responsible. In vain the reluc- 
tant receiver protests against taking the key of his 
own life; in vain he endeavors to pass it to some 



THE POWER OF THE KEYS. 1 8$ 

Other one; in vain he seeks to avoid the necessity of 
deciding life's problems and making life's choice. 
Sometimes he seeks a father confessor and asks him 
to take the key and bind and loose his life for him; 
the father confessor, nothing loath, accepts the 
trust. But it is in vain. Every one of us shall 
give account of himself to God. Whether the father 
confessor sits in a priest's chair, or in a Protes- 
tant minister's chair, or in a religious editor's chair, 
he can take no responsibility; he can give counsel, 
but that is all. To each soul God has given the keys; 
each soul must bind and loose for itself. Sometimes 
he tries to avoid this responsibility by asking the 
Bible to solve life's problems for him. The Bible be- 
comes his father confessor; he even goes to it in su- 
perstitious fashion, opens it at random, and expects 
a chance text to tell him what he may or may not do; 
he treats the Bible as an oracle. But the Bible is no 
lazy man's book. It helps us to think, but is a sorry 
substitute for thinking. May I dance ? The Bible is 
mute. May I go to the theater? Still mute. May 
I drink a glass of wine ? Still mute. The great laws 
and principles of conduct it clearly expounds, but 
what each individual may do in each individual case 
it tells not. Sometimes the puzzled soul seeks, at 
last, escape from the responsibility of life in prayer, 
carries his problem direct to God, and asks God to 
solve it. Tell me, he cries, O Lord ! what I may or 
may not do; what is wise, what is right. But God 
keeps silence. If we knew how to interpret his silence, 
aright, we should hear him say, in and through it. 



1 86 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

"My child, I have given you the keys of your own 
life; you must work its problems out for yourself; 
you must study the book of destiny — I cannot trans- 
late for you; you must solve the problem ; were I to 
show you the answer I should do you harm, not good, 
by the showing. It is better that you work out an 
answer for yourself and get it wrong, than that I give 
you the correct one. For the virtue of the problem 
is in the solvmg of it, not in the solution r 

V. But who is sufficient for these things ? Shall 
we not make mistakes ? frightful mistakes ? fatal mis- 
takes ? Frightful mistakes, yes ! Fatal mistakes, no ! 
For God, who confers upon us liberty and imposes 
on us duty, a liberty which we cannot lay off, a duty 
which we cannot escape, accompanies this otherwise 
terrible gift with a promise which glorifies it: What- 
soever ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, 
and whatsoever ye loose on earth shall be loosed in 
heaven. Go on, take the key, essay the duty, accept 
the responsibility, and be sure of this, that though 
you may make mistakes there is no condemnation to 
them that are in Christ Jesus, that walk not after the 
flesh, but after the spirit. 

A father whose wealth is in ships and warehouses 
and railroads, but who has an acre garden attached 
to the country homestead, summons his^ boys one 
spring, as he is going to Europe, and says to them, 
"I put this garden in your charge; spend what you 
will; cultivate according to your own best judgment; 
send the product to the market; and account to me 
for sales and expenditures when I get home/' " But, 



THE POWER OF THE KEYS. 18/ 

Father," say the boys, " what shall we sow ?" " I can- 
not tell you; you must judge for yourself." ** Where 
shall we sell ?" " Find out for yourselves." " What 
prices ought we to get ?" ^' Learn for yourselves." 
*^ But, Father, we know nothing about gardening; we 
shall make dreadful mistakes." " No doubt you 
will," replies the father, " and you will learn by your 
mistakes; and it is your learning, not the gardening, 
I care for." " But, Father, we are afraid we shall 
bankrupt you." The father laughs and replies : 
*^ You cannot bankrupt me, if you try, with a sum- 
mer's gardening on an acre plot." ^* But, Father," 
finally protest the boys, " we are afraid that when 
you come back and see how poorly we have done you 
will find fault with us and be sorry that you gave us 
such a trust." And the father catches up a piece of 
paper and writes upon it: 

" Know all men by these presents that I hereby ap- 
point my boys, James and John, my true and lawful 
attorneys, to do all things that may be necessary in 
the cultivation and charge of my acre garden, and I 
hereby ratify and confirm beforehand whatever they 
may do." 

And he signs it, hands it to them, and goes his 
way. 

So God gives to us, his children, in this summer 
day out of eternity which we call life, and on this lit- 
tle acre plot of ground out of the universe which we 
call the world, the responsibility and the liberty in- 
volved in the charge of our own destinies, and with 
this he gives power of attorney promising before- 



1 88 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

hand to ratify and confirm whatever we do in loyal 
service to him and in loyal allegiance to his name 
and honor. 

God help us all, in a humble but trusting and cour- 
ageous spirit, to accept the sublime trust he has re- 
posed in us, and to prove ourselves worthy of it by 
our loyalty to him who has bestowed it upon us and 
to that life of service to which by this trust he calls us! 



XI. 
SALVATION BY GROWTH. 

"We were by nature the children of wrath, even as others." 

Ephesians ii., part 3d verse. 

If there has not grown out of this text a very 
gross misrepresentation of God's character and gov- 
ernment, the text has, at least, been used to bolster 
up and strengthen such a misrepresentation. It has 
been imagined, and not in pagan lands and as a part 
of pagan philosophy, but in Christian lands and in 
the Christian pulpit, that humanity is under the 
wrath and hate and curse of God ; that it is under 
this wrath, this hate, this curse, not by reason of 
wrong things done by us, but because of something 
that Adam did or is supposed to have done. This 
text has been called to support the doctrine of orig- 
inal sin — sin which did not originate with us, but 
originated somewhere else, and yet is laid on us as 
though we had committed it. 

It does seem to me that a very little thought of 
the context should save this verse from all miscon- 
struction. Look at the very next sentence : " But 
God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love where- 
with he loved us, even when we were dead in sins." 



Plymouth Church, Sunday morning, December 2, 18S8. 

1 89 



1 



190 SlGiVS OF PROMISE. 

Does that look as if we were the children of his wrath, 
of his hate ? 

Look at the simile itself, the very significance of 
it. What do we mean when we say a person is a 
child of another ? He proceeded from him. He has 
come from him. We have come out of wrath ; it is 
the birth, the very cradle, as it were, in which our 
childhood was rocked. Did we come from God's 
wrath ? Did he create us in anger, and for anger's 
sake? Look at what precedes : ** Among whom also 
we all had our conversation;" that does not, you 
know, mean our talking, but our mode and manner 
of life. " Among whom we all had our conversation 
in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the 
desires of the flesh, and of the mind ; and were by 
nature the children of wrath, even as others.** That 
is to say, we were the product of our own appetites 
and passions ; our life proceeded from our own un- 
regulated natures. We are children of our own ap- 
petites, of our own natures. 

Or you may give the text a broader scope. The 
Bible recognizes two great kingdoms — a kingdom of 
light and a kingdom of darkness ; a kingdom of 
good and a kingdom of evil ; a kingdom of truth 
and a kingdom of falsehood ; a kingdom of God and 
a kingdom of the devil. And men are described as 
children of the one or the other kingdom, that is, 
members of it ; as children are members of a family, 
or citizens of a commonwealth. In the preceding 
verse Paul speaks of the Ephesians as "children of 
disobedience." Does he mean children of God's dis- 



SALVATION BY GROWTH. I9I 

obedience ? There is no more reason for putting 
" God " in the one place than in the other ; for saying 
children of God's wrath than children of God's dis- 
obedience. We are said to be children of light, chil- 
dren of darkness ; children of truth, children of false- 
hood ; children of God, children of the Evil One ; 
and what the Apostle Paul here says is not that we, 
by reason of growth or nature, were under the curse 
or wrath of God, but that we are by nature the chil- 
dren of our own lawless, disobedient, unregulated 
passions.* 

Now, if we were living a hundred years ago, when 
the minister could preach one hour in the morning 
of doctrine, and three-quarters in the afternoon of 
the application, I would go on to show you, by the 
original Greek and by parallel passages in the New 
Testament, that this is the correct interpretation. 
But you would not hear me for that length of time, 
so I will ask you to take the exegesis for granted, 
this morning, and go on and apply the text as I have 
interpreted it. 

I understand Paul, then, to be considering two 
conceptions for our redemption — the one of salva- 
tion by growth ; the other of salvation by grace. 
We were, he says, by growth children of passion, 



*For the benefit of the student I may add that the word (pvaei, 
*• by nature," is rather " by natural process," i.e., growth, and the 
word oftyrj^y " of wrath," is primarily natural disposition, im- 
pulse ; secondarily, any violent agitation of the mind, or emotion : 
*'/r. , reaching after, propension, natural character or disposition 
as resulting from impulses." — Rob. Lex. 



192 ' SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

children of animalism, children of sensuality, chil- 
dren of uncontrolled impulse, children of wrath. 
Growth will not save us ; that is Paul's general 
statement. That implies, then, salvation somewhere 
else ; namely, by gift of God. And yet there are a 
great many men who think that the world is to be 
saved by growth. I think this error needs combating, 
and so I want to put it before you this morning in 
order to combat it. 

I. In the first place, there are a great many 
fathers and mothers who, more or less, believe that 
their children are to be saved by growth, by a 
natural process. They say, " Let them alone ; they 
will come out all right.'* How often you hear it! 
This little child is passionate ; he strikes his brother, 
he pouts, he sulks, he kicks and struggles with his 
nurse ; and we laugh at him. It is quite amusing, 
this anger, when he is only a year or two old. 
Yes, these manifestations please us, as the claw of 
the kitten pleases us when it isn't yet strong enough 
to scratch deeply and do much harm. And if some 
one says, "You musn't allow that ; stop it, stop it !" 
the father says, " Let him alone ; he will outgrow 
it." The little girl prinks before the mirror, and 
comes down pleased to show her dress. " O, let 
her alone ; she will outgrow all that." And so we 
imagine that our children, by growth, by a natural 
process, without any intervention on our part, will 
outgrow their pride, they will outgrow their passion, 
they will outgrow their vanity. " No !" says St. 
Paul ; " we are by growth the children of wrath ; 



SALVATION BY GROWTH. 193 

we are by growth the children of our unregulated pas- 
sions and appetites." Growth never cured a sick man. 
Growth never redeemed a sinful man. And the little 
fist that strikes the blow that doesn't hurt, and the lit- 
tle passion that inflames the fist, all of which we laugh 
at now — wait ! Wait until the muscle grows strong ; 
wait until the knuckles grow steely ; wait until the 
passion grows fierce, and that blow will be the blow 
of Cain on Abel. This little vanity that prinks before 
the glass— wait ! wait ! let it grow, and by and by it 
will fling that girl out into the street to gratify her 
vanity by the awful sale of herself to some man's 
passion. Our vices grow with our growth ; our sins 
strengthen with our strength. Growth never did 
anything for any man but make him strong along 
the line on which he is walking, whether it be for 
good or for evil. 

II. So in society we stand in the presence of 
thronging evils. No man questions that; but the 
optimist says, " Never mind ; we shall outgrow them 
all. It is true there is drunkenness, but we shall out- 
grow it ; it is true there is great ignorance, but we 
shall outgrow it. We shall come out all right ; we 
have gone and are going prosperously along. Time 
cures all things." I beg your pardon. Time cures 
nothing. Time strengthens, time intensifies, but 
time cures nothing. The man who says that it does 
doesn't know as much as the Chinaman, for his 
creed is that with time and patience the mulberry 
leaf becomes satin ; and this optimist has left out 
patience. 



194 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

Some of you remember how this gospel of 
growth, this gospel of laziness, w^as preached in our 
American politics fifty years ago in this country. 
Slavery was growing black and threatening. This 
cloud was coming up out of the South, and was 
growing bigger and bigger ; and men said, ** O, 
leave it alone. Do not worry ; do not trouble us 
here in the North ; do not vex them in the South. 
The country will outgrow slavery." And slavery 
grew with our growth and strengthened with our 
strength, gaining in State and Territory, and only to 
be destroyed, at last, by the loss of our country's 
best blood and by an unparalleled sacrifice of life 
and treasure. Surely in America we should have 
learned that lesson ; but there appear to be many 
who have not learned it. The evil seed of an un- 
paralleled superstition springs up spontaneously 
upon our soil. Indignant public sentiment drives it 
into successive exiles until at last it finds a resting- 
place in the heart of the wilderness by the great Salt 
Lake. We are satisfied ; it is far away from our 
home. Let be, we say ; we shall outgrow it. But 
it grows as fast as we grow. This well-organized 
hierarchy sends out its missionaries to the poor and 
the ignorant of other lands. It organizes a society 
of immigration. It fills up our territory with men and 
women who know not the United States nor its 
authority, and acknowledge allegiance only to the 
apostles of the church which has brought them across 
the sea. It preaches a liberty of lust, disorganizes 
and destroys the family, converts even the public- 



SALVATION BY GROWTH, 1 95 

school system into a minister to ignorance and super- 
stition, acquires absolute control of one great Terri- 
tory of the Nation, and threatens to get political con- 
trol of other Territories adjoining. And the first 
hope of conquering Mormonism comes to us when 
we abandon the notion that there is any salvation 
by growth, and set ourselves to find some other way 
of saving our Western territories from the devastat- 
ing cloud which overshadows them. 

A great Negro population, trained by a century of 
slavery to ignorance, lust, superstition, and the idea 
that labor is a degradation, are emancipated by the 
stroke of the sword, and given the ballot which they 
cannot read. They multiply more rapidly than their 
white neighbors. They decline to fulfill the prophecy 
of those who promised that with the end of slavery 
they should die out. Where they gain political 
supremacy they initiate a reign of corruption de- 
structive to the locality where they live and menac- 
ing even to the Nation. Where they are prevented 
from gaining such supremacy, it is only by methods 
which violate every fundamental principle of free 
democratic states. Has growth done anything to 
solve our Negro problem ? It has only made it 
greater and more insoluble. Whatever has been 
done toward its solution has been done by those who 
belive in salvation by grace, and by unselfish service 
have been giving to the Negroes in the South that 
education and religion without which liberty is only 
the precursor of anarchy and chaos. 

A great ignorant population, beckoned to our 



196 S/GA'S OF PROMISE. 

shores by our rich fields and our democratic institu- 
tions, are massed in our great cities, an easy prey to 
demagogues, difficult of access by our churches. 
Their children are gathered in Chicago in devils* 
Sunday-schools to learn riot, arson, murder. But 
when the word of warning is uttered by men of pre- 
vision, the answer of the optimist is still the same: 
*'' It will all come out right — do not fear: with our 
great American population everything gets right 
after a time/' It is the old, old story — salvation by 
growth. Pra}^ how long must the farmer warm the 
viper in his bosom before the viper becomes domes- 
ticated and loses the poison from his fangs ? 

Capital is organized in great and rapidly concen- 
trating trusts and monopolies, holding masterful con- 
trol over the telegraphic communication, over the 
railway lines, over the products of our mines, and 
now by trusts and combinations over the products of 
our manufactories, and even of our fields. 

This upon one side; on the other the greatest labor 
organization of history forming in a federation of all 
railroad employes — brakemen, switchmen, engineers, 
and conductors, and forming for the purpose of con- 
trolling traffic, if a war between labor and capital 
should arise. And still the same optimist cries out, 
*^ Let be; all will go well; do not interfere." Still we 
are lulled to sleep by the same apostles of the gospel 
of growth. Now, I do not sa}^ that the National Gov- 
ernment should give education to the South, though 
I believe it. I do not say that the Government should 
have the regulation of organizations, though I believe 



SALVATION BY GROWTH. 1 97 

it. I simply say this : the Nation will never be 
saved from the dangers that threaten it by mere 
growth. It must be saved by something very differ- 
ent. When the moral influences are set to work, you 
may trust to growth to develop them. You must 
patiently wait for them to work our project out. But 
no man and no race of men are safe in saying that 
growth will save individual, family, or humanity, un- 
less the moral forces themselves are set at work. 

To-day, as I am talking to you, the Anarchists in 
Chicago are gathering the children of foreign parents 
in the little back rooms behind the saloons, and are 
teaching them the principles of Anarchism, in An- 
archic Sunday-schools, by the hundred. And the 
American Home Missionary Society is reaching out 
its hand, imploring money from the churches, and 
saying: " We are a hundred thousand dollars in debt.'* 
And we hold back the money for their work and trust 
to growth and time to cure all things. O ! you 
need not fear. I am not going to take up a collec- 
tion for the Home Missionary Society; but I put it 
before you whether, in the face of all the lessons of 
history, whether, in the face of all the lessons of our 
own history, it is safe to stand in the presence of 
these great threatening dangers and say, " Ah, let be; 
all things will come out all right to him that waits." 

III. As to the individual, the same principle ap- 
plies. As there is no salvation of the nation by 
growth, so there is none in personal experience. Men 
say: "There is no great danger for me. We have 
abolished hell in the nineteenth century; there is 



198 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

nothing for me to fear. I know that I am not all 
right; I am sometimes passionate; my appetite does 
sometimes get the better of me; I am a little greedy 
and covetous; but then growth will take care of all 
that; I am coming out all right; I have strayed a lit- 
tle from the way, that is all. These little defects I 
shall put aside by and by. Growth — growth; just 
give me time, and if the time on earth is not enough, 
give me eternity. I am going to heaven by and by. 
You may go there before me, but I am coming, too. 
We are all going, some sooner than others, but it is 
only a question of time after all." Growth cures im- 
perfections and infirmities of character, but growth 
never makes changes in character ; never ! never ! 
Your puppy will grow to be a dog, but your wolf- 
puppy will never grow to be a shepherd-dog. Your 
wheat-seed will grow to be a full head of wheat, 
but your thistle-field will never grow to be a wheat- 
field. You say, ^' See how this man's business has 
grown. He started in a little store; now he has the 
whole block." I beg your pardon: it has not grown. 
If you will allow an ungrammatical phrase, he 
" growed " it. He made it grow. What was the 
secret of his success ? Nights that you were playing 
he was studying. Nights that you were sleeping he 
was lying awake, thinking. He worked and labored. 
With energy and self-sacrifice he made that business 
what it was. 

You business men know now that I am talking 
truth, whatever you thought of my theology before. 
You know that you cannot build a business without 



SALVATION BY GROWTH, I99 

care and energy and force, and battle and struggle 
continually. You might as well expect the marble 
of the sculptor to grow a statue; you might as well 
expect the painter's canvas to grow to be a beauti- 
ful face with no touch of the painter's brush, with no 
exercise of the painter's skill, as to expect this child, this 
country, this man, to grow to perfection without toil, 
without labor. It is true that the nineteenth century 
has abolished the old pagan thought of hell, and it will 
never return. We believe that there is no Inquisition 
on the globe or in after-life; we believe that there is 
no fire kindled by a human torch on earth, no at^to- 
da-fe kindled by divine torch in eternity. But it is 
also true that what a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap. It is as true as eternity, as true as God Al- 
mighty, there is no way in which a man can sow seed 
of thistles in this life and expect to reap wheat in the 
life to come. 

You have seen the boy and girl, the man and the 
maiden, starting out in life, a little rippling stream 
flowing between them. They walk along hand in 
hand, and the stream grows broader and the hands 
are reached out farther and farther until at last they 
fall apart; and still they go on singing. Now the 
song has stopped, a song no longer. The stream has 
grown to be a brawling river. The little estrange- 
ment has grown to be a great gulf. And growth 
will only carry them farther and farther apart. 
Growth will not help them; one or the other must 
find some way of bridging the river or they will never 
more walk side by side and hand in hand. And so it 



200 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

is with us. We let some little brook come between 
God and ourselves. And the longer we live the greater 
grows the separation. Do you think that God is go- 
ing to cross the stream and come to you ? If ever 
you wish to be on God's side of that great stream, you 
must cross that stream yourself. Growth will not 
bring you and God together. 

And now some of you will say to me, ^^ Why, Dr. 
Abbott, I thought you were an evolutionist !*' I am. 
Do you know what the doctrine of Evolution is? 
Struggle for existence; survival of the fittest. It is 
salvation by struggle: not by idle, lazy growth; that 
IS not evolution. There is not a lower form any- 
where, which reaches a higher form, that doesn't 
struggle for the attainment. 

Those Puritan fathers who were struggling with 
sterile soil and inhospitable winters; those Revolu- 
tionary fathers who fought against odds, but with a 
patient courage that w^as invincible — they laid the 
foundation of America's greatness. They who in 
anti-slavery campaigns battled and bore brave testi- 
mony, and they who in civil war suffered, fought 
and died for liberty and union — they preserved the 
Nation's greatness. We have grown because we 
fought, because we have been worthy of our growth. 

I am an optimist. I believe in the future of this 
country ; in the future of God's church ; in the 
future of God's children. Yet not because I believe 
that we are going to be brought into the kingdom 
of God by growth; but because I believe in God in 
heaven, and in the power of God in the human soul. 



SALVATION BY GROWTH, 201 

I Started to preach to you this morning a sermon on 
the contrasted conception of salvation by growth and 
salvation by grace. But it has taken all the allotted 
time to speak on salvation by growth, and I must 
leave till next Sunday morning to set before you sal- 
vation by grace through our Lord Jesus Christ. 



XII. 
SALVATION BY GRACE. 

** But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he 
loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us to- 
gether with Christ, (by grace ye are saved,) and hath raised us up 
together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ 
Jesus : that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches 
of his grace, in his kindness toward us, through Christ Jesus." 

Eph, ii. 4-7. 

In speaking from the verses immediately preceding 
these verses last Sunday morning, I endeavored to 
point out to you the negative side of Paul's position, 
- — that we are not saved, we are not rectified, made 
right, either as individuals, or in the political and so- 
cial organism., by growth. We are by natural growth 
the children of disobedience, the children of our own 
ill-regulated and ungoverned impulses and appetites 
and passions. Growth will make stronger, larger, 
that which exists ; but growth will not change its 
nature. If your child is already what you wish him 
to be, only you would like more of that in him, 
growth will take care of it. But if there is any evil, 
if there is childlike despotism in dominion over a 
younger sister, if there is greed in the dividing of the 
apple or the cake, if there is vanity over the new 

Plymouth Church, December 9, 1888. 

202 



SALVATION BY GRACE. 203 

dress or the new shoes, if there is pride showing itself 
in childlike haughtiness — leave those alone and 
they will grow with his growth and strengthen with 
his strength until they come to manhood manifesta- 
tions. If your child is what you would have him to 
be, leave him alone, and growth will suffice. But if 
there is a cloud as a black speck in the horizon, it 
will grow to be a great storm-cloud with lightning 
and thunder in it. If there is to-day a five-thousand- 
dollar corruption fund, in the next presidential elec- 
tion it will be fifty thousand, and in the following 
one five hundred thousand. If there is a saloon 
power that threatens a little, its threatening will 
grow with the growth of the Nation, and its power 
and strength with the power and strength of the Na- 
tion. If you are what you want to be, you have only 
to wait for growth. But if there is in you a pride, a 
passion, a vanity, anything that in your inmost soul 
you abhor, growth will never change it. Growth will 
make an oak out of an acorn, but growth never will 
make a wheat-field out of Canada thistles. 

Over against the notion that the world can be 
made better by the simple process of growth, Paul 
puts in the passage before us, and in many another 
passage, his doctrine of salvation by gift, or grace. 
Character is the product of bestowment, not mere 
development. Let me try to put his doctrine briefly. 
It is, then, this : That God, after whom the whole 
family in heaven and earth are named, is working 
out, through all the various processes of life, as the 
true father and mother work out through the various 



204 S/GA^S OF PROMISE, 

processes of the family, the development of a divine 
and ennobled character. That all things in life are, 
in his ordering and his use of them, ministering to 
this end. That for this, as the Apostle tells us in one 
place, God has appointed prophets and apostles and 
evangelists and teachers, that men may be built up 
into a Christlike manhood. That, as he tells in an- 
other place, the world is yours, and life is yours, and 
death is yours, and ApoUos and Paul and Cephas — 
all religious teachers — are yours, and all things pres- 
ent and all things to come are yours, because all 
these things are Christ's, and Christ is God's ; that 
is, all these things are instruments of Christ's redeem- 
ing, upbuilding, glorifying work in the world. Or, 
as he tells us elsewhere in that eighth chapter of Ro- 
mans, often misinterpreted, misrepresented — "To be 
minding the flesh is death ; to be minding the spirit 
is life and peace ; because the minding of the flesh is 
enmity against God ; for it is not subject to the law 
of God, neither indeed can be. So, then, they that 
are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not 
in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the spirit of 
God dwell in you." 

It is the same statement as that made here. If 
men are living after the things of the flesh ; if they 
are living according to worldly standards and ac- 
cording to fleshly appetites, no growth, no develop- 
ment, will make them better; they will grow in grace 
only if the Spirit of God is given to them, if the Di- 
vine Spirit is dwelling in them. 
• I often think we can best come at the teaching of 



SAL VA TION B Y GRA CE, 20$ 

the Bible by taking life to comment on and interpret 
it. Let us look for a moment or two on the interpre- 
tation which life gives us of the Pauline doctrine of 
salvation by grace or gift. The little child is put 
into the family. For what ? That we may take 
him as our children take their doll-babies for their 
amusement ? I think fathers sometimes believe so ; 
though mothers rarely do. That we may play with 
him and get amusement out of him and enjoy him, 
and by and by get cross because he does not please 
us ? or that we may make a bookkeeper out of him, or 
a mechanic, or a merchant, or a lawyer, or a doctor, 
or a preacher ? No, for none of these things — neither 
that we may get amusement out of him or give 
amusement to him, nor that we may make this, that, 
or the other specific thing in him, but that we may 
make manhood out of him ; and the manhood wrought 
in the boy and the womanhood wrought in the girl is 
the process bestowed by father, bestowed by mother, 
upon the child ; and all things in the family are trib- 
utuary to this end. We give our children presents ; 
we give them food ; we give them clothing ; we give 
them shelter ; but, after all, no father gives his child 
that which his child has a right to expect or demand, 
unless the father out of his own soul gives him en- 
ergy, honor, truth, manhood. No mother gives her 
child that which the child has a right to expect, un- 
less out of her own reservoired nature she pours into 
him purity and truth and love. Alas that we so mis- 
shape our children ! We wonder at those Orientals 
that wrapped their children in swaddling-clothes. 



206 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

We wonder at those Chinese that put their children's 
feet in little pinching shoes that the feet may be 
small. They dwarf and belittle their nature by their 
ill-building. So, alas ! do we, forgetting that the 
one thing we have to give to our children is the gift 
of a noble character. Babyhood passed, the child 
goes to school. For what ? To learn Greek or Latin 
or mathematics or geography or history or reading 
or writing? What is the benefit of these things? 
The end of the school, as the end of the family, is 
still to give character. And in selecting the school, if 
we are at all wise, we select that one in which there is 
some strong influence in the teacher, some power for 
good, some quality that can be bestowed by his richer 
nature on the child's poorer one ; and if we are at 
all wise we measure every element in the system of 
education by its power to develop qualities of char- 
acter. Why study literature? Because literature 
teaches a broad sympathy with human life and hu- 
man experience ; in Greece, in Rome, in England, in 
France, in Germany, in all lands, in all ages, essen- 
tially the same. Why study science ? Because sci- 
ence teaches the eye to see and the ear to hear, and 
the man to deal exactly with the materials of the uni- 
verse with which we are all surrounded. Why study 
history ? Because in history we see God lifting up 
the human race, and building, generation after gener- 
ation, in the evolution of humanity, the kingdom of 
righteousness and peace which is the kingdom of 
God. The end of all studies is the same. It is that 
through the text-book, through the school-room, 



SALVATION BY GRACE, 20/ 

above all through the teacher, we may give to our 
children a character and quality which, if they are 
ever to have it, they must have from some one else 
who has it. The question of moral teaching in our 
public schools is not a question whether a few verses 
shall be read from the Bible every day. It is not a 
question whether a teacher shall repeat the Lord's 
Prayer or rattle it off, putting his pupils through de- 
votional exercises as one might through a species of 
gymnastics. All that is nothing. The great funda- 
mental question which the American people have 
still to face in dealing with their system, a question 
scarcely so much as considered, is the question 
whether a common-school system is worth the bricks 
and mortar which make up its public buildings, un- 
less it be so organized, from the foundation to the 
topmost stone, that in all its machinery and in all its 
spirit it shall be building men and women for Ameri- 
can citizenship. 

We get what we call the educative processes, and 
go out into life. The political economists tell us that 
government is organized to protect the individual 
while he is, forsooth, making money. But that is 
not the design of government, not the divine design. 
That is not the function which it exercises in the 
world. Why is a republican government better than 
a monarchical one? Is it to be presumed that the 
many are wiser than the few ? Not at all. Is it to be 
considered as settled that there is no process by which 
a comparatively small number of intelligent, virtuous, 
educated men can be selected and into their hands 



208 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

the control and administration of affairs can be put, 
and by them that control can be better exercised 
than by the ignorant, the unwashed and unterrified ? 
Not at all. It is this : that in the attrition, in the 
battle, in the evil forces as well as the good, and the 
mistakes as well as the wisdom, we fortify and de- 
velop character. For many years China has been 
nuder the government of her best, her educated aris- 
tocracy, and she is to-day just what she was two 
thousand years ago. For many years has Russia 
been under the administration of her aristocracy, her 
best, her bureaucracy, and she is to-day no less bar- 
baric than she was five hundred years ago. While in 
one hundred years of American life, with all our mis- 
takes — and they have been neither few nor insignifi- 
cant — we have moved forward with unparalleled ra- 
pidity in morality and intelligence. We have made 
more progress under a republican government in one 
century than aristocratic or monarchical systems have 
made in many centuries. Yea, the very things that 
seem to threaten us develop us. When slavery 
threatens, then only do we learn how to spell liberty; 
and when corruption threatens, then at last the slow- 
waking conscience of the American people begins to 
ask, What shall we do to purify character and life ? 
And when the saloons have made their reeling and 
drunken victims to roll along our sidewalks until at 
last the burden and the disgrace become intolerable, 
then at last we begin to say, What is the law of tem- 
perance, and how shall we achieve it? The Tsar of 
all the Russias with a pen-stroke sets free the serfs 



SALVATION BY GRACE, 209 

of Russia, and Russia remains and the serfs remain 
as they were before. The American people with a 
sword-stroke set free the three millions of slaves on 
American soil, and the whole American people learn 
a lesson of liberty which before they knew not. 

All life is working out the gift of God; that is, the 
gift of character. Business — what do we go into 
business for? To make fortunes? Was man made 
for money? Life is to make men. The factory, the 
court-room, the polling-place, the market — they are 
all educators; and whether we will or not, we are 
learning in life's great school lessons of honor or dis- 
honor, virtue or vice, truth or falsehood, character 
for good or character for evil. The mechanic holds 
the knife on the grindstone, and the knife says, 
" How I am polishing off this grindstone !'* No ! 
the grindstone is to put an edge on the knife. And 
all business of life is to put an edge on character, and 
temper into character. We learn our heroism by the 
battles of life. What are " means of grace " ? The 
Bible is a means of grace; the church is a means of 
grace; the family is a means of grace: but also the 
world and the polling-booth — they are means either 
of grace or of disgrace. 

And the very things in life which may seem to be 
destructive of character are the instruments and 
means whereby God is to come to us. The answers 
come in strange and unexpected ways, and we do 
not recognize them as they come. The angel that 
brings God's gift is not always white-robed nor 
always bright-faced, but sometimes black-robed and 



2IO SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

dark of visage. We pray for faith and hope and 
charity. We ask these three. O Lord, we are liv- 
ing in a skeptical age ! We do not believe, and 
we do not know why we believe. Send us some 
prophet that will teach us ! And God sends us 
"Robert Elsmere;'* and everybody begins to read it, 
and shortly begins to say, " Is that true ?" If it is 
not true, how does it appear to be false ? How shall 
I find out what the truth is ? And we begin to talk 
and discuss and debate and investigate. And by the 
very process which we dread we get the muscle of 
faith. A half-believer prays, " O God, if there be a 
God, give me hope in immortality, if there be an im- 
mortality." And death comes to answer his prayer, 
and a child or wife is plucked away from his side; 
and he goes and looks down into the open grave, and 
he says, ** No ! no ! that sod does not cover all that I 
loved." There is some gleam of light through that 
opened door. Death has brought him the message 
of hope that no other messenger could bring him. 
We pray for love. O, quicken our sympathies for 
mankind ! O, make us perfect, even as our Father 
in heaven is perfect ! Give us the redeeming love 
that Christ himself had. God sends us the Irishman 
and the Pole and the Hungarian and the Swiss and 
the German and the Italian and the Chinaman, and 
then he says, " Love them." We do not like our 
school, we grown men and women, any better than 
our boys and girls like theirs, and we have to be 
whipped to our tasks and learn them despite our* 
selves. 



SALVATION BY GRACE, 211 

Did you ever think what Christ gave to his dis- 
ciples, and how he did it ? What did he give to 
Peter? Steadfastness. How? By letting him be 
tempted. "Satan hath desired to sift thee like wheat. 
And when thou art converted, strengthen thy breth- 
ren." He suffered him to go into Caiaphas's court 
and there deny his Lord ; and then, looking on 
him with a look of love, Christ brought him to 
repentance, and cured the vacillating temper by 
revealing to him the sin and shame of it. How, too, 
did he give to Thomas faith ? By appearing to the 
other disciples when Thomas was away, and leaving 
him only without tangible evidence of resurrection, 
and dependent on others* testimony, and making him 
long and thirst for some better evidence, and then 
giving him at last — what ? A touch of the print of 
the nails and the spear-thrust in the side ? No ! 
Thomas did not put his finger in the print of the 
nails, nor thrust his finger in the side, but looked up 
into Christ's face and cried, " My Lord and my God.'* 
And how did he give John love ? He allowed him 
that was ambitious, that was the one who sought just 
before the Passover for a first and best ofiice in the 
kingdom, to see the King hang upon the cross, and 
hear as the last message that broke from his trem- 
bling lips, " Mother, behold thy son ! Son, behold 
thy mother !" He gave to him the great duty of 
love, taught him the grace of love by giving him a 
duty of love. 

This gift of character is the only gift worth giving. 
It is really all that we can give to one another. What- 



212 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

ever else we try to give we fail in. You give a man 
property without giving him judgment, and how 
quickly it goes ! You give him food without giving 
him thrift, and how soon he will come back for more 
food ! How long will your house remain with the 
man that has no wisdom, no economy, no virtue 
either to build or to hold it? The only thing worth 
giving to another man is something that will make 
him a better man. I know that Christ says. Give to 
him that asketh you, and from him that would bor- 
row turn thou not away. But, you observe, he does 
not tell you what to give. The beggar asks you for 
money: give him a job. He asks you for a drink: 
give him temperance. He asks you for something 
exterior: give him the power and the capacity of self- 
control. If you do not, you are not giving, you are 
destroying. A young woman came to my house the 
other day whose mother was just dying, and she 
wanted some money to get to her mother by the 
very next train, to see her before she was gone; and 
I gave her five dollars. And then the next day I sent 
to the house she gave as her residence, and no such 
person lived there; and of course, I have not seen 
the five dollars since. What did I give her? Any- 
thing ? Yes, I gave her education in cheating, in dis- 
honesty, in chicanery, in fraud. I would have done 
her a service, a service of God ; and I was to her a 
minister of the devil. There is no way by which you 
can really give to your fellow-men, unless in the gift 
there goes somehow that which shall quicken and 
strengthen character. Give the ragged man a coat, 



SALVATION BY GRACE. 213 

if you can so give it that you shall develop, not 
weaken, his manhood. Give the hungry man food, 
if you so can give it that in giving you will make a 
man of him, so that he will be able to take care of 
himself for the future. 

Character is, after all, the only thing we can give 
to one another; and it is always a free gift. Tem- 
perance, justice, righteousness — they cannot be done 
up and sold at so much a yard, or so much a pound, 
like either dry goods or groceries. The child, it is 
true, is legally required to render service to father 
and mother when he grows old; but the service of 
father and mother are free gifts. The teacher, it is 
true, is paid money for the instruction which he is 
giving to your child; but let the child once get this 
conception that the teacher is giving instruction, not 
for love, not for enthusiasm, but for the money which 
he receives, and the power of teaching is taken away. 
You may pay your minister in one sense, perhaps, 
more than his ministry is worth; nevertheless, the 
work of the minister in character-building is not to 
be based, and cannot be, on mercantile foundations. 
What I do for you I must do out of a free will and 
the enthusiasm of love, or it cannot be done at all. 
What you are to do for one another must be your 
free gift. For what is a church but a great spiritual 
exchange ? You have reverence, and they are lack- 
ing in reverence; but they have philanthropy, and 
you are lacking in philanthropy ; they have the 
warmth and tenderness of human sympathy, and you 
are lacking in warmth and tenderness; and we come 



214 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

together, and we exchange with one another. I will 
have a little of your practical philanthropy, I will get 
a little tenderness and sympathy, and you shall have 
something of my reverence. So are we building one 
another up. But the exchange is a free gift. And 
yet men think they must pay God for v/hat he is do- 
ing in the building up of a divine manhood through 
all these ministries ! 

Now let me come back for a moment to my text. 
" But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love 
wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in 
sins, hath quickened us together with Christ; and 
hath raised us up together, and made us sit together 
in heavenly places, in Christ Jesus." This is not a 
promise for the future. It is not. He is going to 
make you alive after you are dead; he is going to 
raise you from the grave; he is going to bring you 
into heaven. The promises of God are in the present 
tense. All that which pagan philosophy and Jewish 
philosophy and our own system put into the future 
Paul brings into the present. If you will let him, he 
will make you to live with Christ; that is to say, he 
will give you the Christ-life. Do you want it ? Do 
you want the same spirit in you that was in Christ 
Jesus, who was beckoned with a hand from which he 
never could draw back by every opportunity to carry 
the spirit of love and faith to his fellow-men ? 

I do not know. On Sunday morning I look over 
this great congregation, and then I go away, and Mr. 
Shearman tells me that he wants teachers in the 
home school, and Mr. Lane tells me he wants teach- 



SAL VA TION B V GRACE. 2 1 5 

ers in the Bethel, and Mr. Jaques tells me he wants 
teachers in the Mayflower, and I wonder and wonder, 
if we all wanted to be made alive with the life that 
is in Christ Jesus, whether it would be necessary to 
put this opportunity of service before you more than 
once. I stand at the Brooklyn Bridge, and see the 
great crowd that throngs over there, hastening to 
business, and I know and recognize the claims that 
business has on men. I do not believe that we are, 
as a nation, full of greed and covetousness. I do not 
believe that our business men are madly wrestling 
with one another in a race for wealth. I do not be- 
lieve that a communism of wealth is common in 
America. Yet I cannot but think that if there was 
in our Christian churches as much eagerness for the 
life that was in Christ Jesus as there is eagerness for 
some other forms and phases of life — I cannot but 
think that there would be more teachers than chil- 
dren to be taught; I cannot but think it would not 
be true that just across Fulton Street there would be 
a thousand children ready to take the Gospel, and 
yet left without it because there are not enough 
Christ-like men and women to go down and give it 
to them. 

He offers to raise us up above the power of sin, 
above the power of temptation, above the sordid na- 
ture of life, that we may walk in the elevation in 
which Christ Jesus walked. Do you want it ? He 
offers to make us sit in heavenly places with Christ 
Jesus, not by and by, but now and here. Blessed are 
those that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for 



2l6 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

they shall be filled. Do you so hunger ? The dove 
waits, and the voice, and it does but need the baptism 
of consecration and the dove would alight on your 
head and on mine, and the voice would come out of 
the now silent heaven and speak to us as it spoke to 
him of olden time, " You are my beloved son." But 
we bid the dove to wait and the voice to be still till 
we have grown a little older and gone a little farther. 
As one touched by some sorceress hand and turned 
from prince to brute waits for the hour of deliver- 
ance and restoration, so we live our sensual and 
animal, or half-sensual and half-animal lives, while 
He that would redeem us, would lift the world off, 
would touch with his divine wand our nature, waits 
our permission and consent. 

Now we cannot understand life, and do not. But 
in the ages to come we shall. Then we shall see, and 
then the mystery of the world and the mystery of the 
temptation and the mystery of the battle will be in- 
terpreted. The great wheat-field, like a congrega- 
tion, bows its head in prayer before Almighty God, 
and cries for divine glory. And God says, ** Yes, you 
shall have it;" and he sends the sickle to cut down 
the stalk; and he sends the flail to beat out the 
straw; and he sends the millstone to grind up the 
grain; and he sends the sieve to shake and sift the 
flour; and he sends the baker to knead the dough; 
and he sends the oven to heat and bake it. And then 
what ? Then the wheat is ready to begin service, 
and to go as bread for nourishment to the camp for 
the soldier, to the woodsman's house, to the sewing- 



SALVATION BY GRACE. 21/ 

woman in the garret, to you and to me. Fit me for 
thy service, O God, though it take the sickle and 
the flail and the millstone and the kneading and the 
fire ! When life has done its work, and given me by 
its discipline thy love, then I shall be glad to share 
thy glory; for then I shall understand that thy glory 
is thy redeeming love and thy nursing service. What 
is the glory of heaven but the glory of a better and 
more unselfish service? It would be my prayer — 
would it not be yours ? — if ever my lips should be 
forbidden to speak the love of God, if ever my hand 
should be forbidden to reach out in loving grasp to 
bring others nearer to God, forbidden that I might 
wear a crown and hold a palm and sing a song, 
knowing no service and no self-sacrifice — I would 
pray that the voice might be silenced and the hand 
turned to ashes in an eternal death. For the glory 
of God is the glory of love and service, and he is, as 
our choir told us this morning, the loving One, and 
the gift that he gives us is the gift of loving as Christ 
loved. 



XIII. 
A POWER UNTO SALVATION. 

*' For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for- 
ever." — Afatt. vi. 13. 

" But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come 
upon you." — Acts i. 8. 

' * For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ : for it is the 
power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth ; to the Jew 
first, and also to the Greek." — Romajis i. 16. 

The first of these verses declares that power be- 
longs to God, and, by implication, that we have 
power only as we borrow it from God. The second 
verse declares how this power is, in the moral and 
spiritual realm, to be bestowed upon men. The third 
verse declares through what instrumentality this 
power shall be bestowed ; namely, through the 
Gospel. 

The religion of the Bible is, then, characteristically 
a power-bestowing religion. It is this which dis- 
tinguishes it from all other religions, that it comes 
giving, or professing to give, to men a power which 
before they did not possess. As a system of ethical 
rules of conduct the Bible does not widely differ 
from other systems. Elsewhere the principles of 
justice, mercy, righteousness, truth, have been codi- 



Plymouth Church, Sunday morning, January 13, 1889. 

218 



A POWER UNTO SALVATION. 219 

fied as they are codified in the Bible. As a revela- 
tion of truth it differs from other books, and yet not 
pre-eminently so. It makes clearer the doctrine of 
immortality ; but the doctrine of immortality is not 
peculiar to the Bible. It makes clear the fatherhood 
of God ; but the fatherhood of God is not peculiar to 
the Bible. What is peculiar about the Bible and the 
religion which the Bible represents is that the Book 
and the religion hold as in their hand a gift of power 
bestowed upon humanity. All the significance of the 
miracles of the Old Testament and the New Testa- 
ment lies in this, that they are the verification, mani- 
festation, exhibitions of a power more than human, 
witnesses to a help that lies beyond humanity, but 
which is extended to humanity. It is in this sense 
that we Christians hold strenuously to the doctrine 
that the religion of the Bible is a supernatural relig- 
ion. It is a matter of small account whether man 
thinks this or that or the other miracle was wrought, 
but it is a matter of very great account whether he 
believes there is any hand stretched down from 
heaven to help man in his impotence, or any light 
streaming down from heaven to guide man in his 
darkness. 

So throughout the entire Old Testament the history 
is the history of a power not belonging to humanity, 
and yet working for the benefit of Israel. It is by the 
power of God that the Israelites are summoned from 
their bondage. It is by the power of God in a battle 
with the powers represented by necromancy that they 
are set free. It is by the power of God that the waves 



220 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

of the Red Sea part for them in the wilderness. It is 
by the power of God that the walls of Jericho fall, 
and that one after another victory crowns their cam- 
paigning in Palestine. The question, how, in what 
way, this, that, or the other work was wrought, is im- 
material; but take from the Old Testament history 
this thought, that God is using his power for his own 
children, and you take out the very foundation of 
that history, and leave nothing but a crumbling mass 
of disjointed and insignificant stones. The history of 
Israel is not the history of what the Jews did or Jew- 
ish great men did, but of what a power not themselves 
w^as doing for them. As this is the Old Testament 
history of the nation, so this is the Old Testament 
experience of the individual. It is the theme of the 
poet. It reappears in David, in Isaiah, in Jeremiah, in 
Malachi, in every prophet. Infinite are the variations 
of this theme, but the song is always the same. 
*^ Power belongeth unto thee, O God, but unto thee 
also belongeth mercy :" the helpful hand that gives 
forth power for suffering humanity. Let me read 
one expression of this experience : 

*' For thou wilt light my candle : the Lord my God will en- 
lighten my darkness. 

For by thee I have run through a troop ; and by my God have I 
leaped over a wall. 

As for God, his way is perfect : the word of the Lord is tried: he 
is a buckler to all those that trust in him. 

For who is God save the Lord ? or who is a rock save our God ? 

It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way 
perfect. 



A POWER UNTO SALVATION. 221 

He maketh my feet like hinds' feet, and setteth me upon my high 
places. 

He teacheth my hands to war, so that a bow of steel is broken by 
mine arms. 

Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation : and thy 
right hand hath holden me up, and thy gentleness hath made me 
great." 

When we pass from the Old Testament to the New, 
we pass from a measurably physical to an almost 
wholly spiritual realm. The old doctrine that power 
belongeth unto God, and that God bestows this 
power upon his children, reappears in the New Testa- 
ment, but in a new form. It is now the spiritual 
helpfulness of God that comes to the front. The 
spiritual helpfulness of God was in the Old Testa- 
ment, but there it was in the background. The notion 
of the physical helpfulness of God was in the front 
in the Old Testament ; it is in the New Testament, 
but it retires to the background. The whole human 
race is, as it were, lifted up into another realm. Now 
reappears the statement of divine power with a new 
direction to it. Still is the declaration that his is the 
power, but the power of God is now declared to be 
unto a spiritual salvation. It is a moral and a spirit- 
ual power, a moral and a spiritual helpfulness, which 
the New Testament prominently and chiefly imports. 

We speak as though a man's power had been 
greatly increased during the past few centuries, as 
though civilization had greatly increased our power ; 
but if we will think of it a little, we shall see that 
all the power of civilization is a power that is not 



222 SIG.VS OF PROMISE, 

our own. I believe it is true that the American 
athlete is a little taller than the Greek athlete, and 
the American racer can run a little longer and hold 
his wind a little better than the Greek runner. It 
is probably true that the soldier of to-day is a few 
inches taller and a fevr inches larger around the 
girth than the soldier of old English times. The 
armor in the Tower of London, worn by the soldiers 
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is too 
small for the British grenadier of the nineteenth 
century. We have increased a little our individual 
muscular power, but the increase is very little, while 
our power as a race and our power as communities 
has been increased almost infinitely. Why? Be- 
cause we have learned to rely more on power not our 
own. We run no better races, but we have laid hold 
of a power that carries us. We can swim no better 
than he who swam across the Hellespont, but we 
have laid hold of a power that carries us unfatigued 
across the ocean. We no longer light our way with 
torches carried in our hands, but we ask the stored 
electricity in nature to furnish us with electric light. 
All the powers of modern civilization are stored in 
nature, which we lay hold upon and use ourselves. 
We have grown strong, not because we are stronger, 
but because we have acquired the capacity to use a 
strength not our own. So in the healing art. What 
is it ? It is the employment of powers that are be- 
yond ourselves, outside ourselves. Ask the doctor 
what is his best help, who is his best nurse, what is 
his most certain medicine, and he will say, ** Nature.'* 



A POWER UNTO SALVATION, 223 

My dear Doctor, spell it in one syllable. Say not na- 
ture, but God ! For what is the difference between 
nature and God ? The great fundamental truth is 
that we are environed by powers that are not our own. 
And I will not go to an orthodox authority, but I will 
ask Herbert Spencer to tell us what this power is in 
that famous definition of his : " Amid the mysteries 
which become the more mysterious the more they 
are thought about, there will remain the absolute cer- 
tainty that we are ever in the presence of an Infinite 
and Eternal Energy from whom all things proceed." 
What is this but the statement, in the language of 
modern philosophy, of the old Hebrew Psalmist's 
declaration, Power belongeth unto God ? And what 
is the result of all modern science but this : a skill to 
lay hold on this Power that is not our own, and to 
make it our own by obedience to its laws ? 

Now, the New Testament, as a spiritual appendix 
to Old Testament teaching, confirmed by modern sci- 
ence, adds the declaration that there are powders not our 
own that make for human helpfulness and lift us up 
in the spiritual realm. The power is not merely phy- 
sical ; the use is not merely physical. The power is 
spiritual, and it can be laid hold on to help the spir- 
itual life. The power that is of God is a power unto 
spiritual salvation. As there is a power to help man 
in the material and physical world, so there is a 
power to help him in the realm of virtue and truth; 
as there is a power to help him in the sensuous, so 
there is also a power to help him in the spiritual 
realm. Do we doubt it ? You do not doubt that 



224 SIG.VS OF PROMISE. 

there is a power in ourselves which we give to one 
another. Can you question that a hero can give to 
the coward courage ? Can 3'ou question that a hope- 
ful man can inspire hope ? Do you doubt that a 
weak-willed man can be made stronger in \\\\\ by 
leaning upon a man whose will is stronger than his 
own ? O, can any man or woman that has sat in 
this church in times past doubt that there is power in 
a great heart to fill vacant hearts full of loyal, ebulli- 
ent, noble, divine love ? 

And as the individual imparts to the individual, 
the father and mother to their children, the teacher 
to his pupils, the pastor to his congregation, so gen- 
erations impart to other generations. It is not all a 
fiction, this Roman Catholic idea of works of super- 
erogation stored up, on which men may draw. The 
world has accumulated a great reservoir of virtue, 
and we draw on it every day. You are stronger men 
and women to-day for your Puritan ancestry. You 
are stronger for your Anglo-Saxon blood. You are 
drawing from all this accumulated moral force and 
power reservoired by the moral nature of your an- 
cestors, and you are the more accountable for the 
impulse they give you, the strength they impart. 

The teaching of the Gospel, then, is this : that we 
live, move, and have our being in a great reservoir of 
forces. We reach out our hand and lay hold on 
them, and make them serve us. We do this with 
material forces ; we do it with moral and spiritual 
. forces. We lay hold on them, and make them our 



A POWER UNTO SALVATION, 22$ 

own. We are strong by using a strength that is not 
our own. 

In view of this brief statement, let me say, first, 
that salvation is not something you are to get in 
heaven by and by, on condition that you do some- 
thing or believe something or think something or 
experience something here on earth now. Salvation 
is not a crown on the head, nor a palm in the hand, 
nor gold in the streets to walk on, nor pearly gates 
to go through, nor a privilege of sitting and singing 
and paying nothing, nor any such thing. I will not 
say that the Bible does not declare that man wuU 
be saved from future punishment through faith in 
Christ ; but I do say that that is not the burden of 
the Bible declaration ; and it has been made the 
burden of preaching altogether too often. The great 
good news of the Bible is this : men are saved from 
the burdens of their present life ; they are saved 
from the darkness of their skepticism ; from the 
bondage of their superstition ; from the cruelty and 
the inhumanity of their selfish natures ; from the 
weakness of a will that cannot hold them firm and 
strong in the midst of temptation; from sin here and 
now. There is no such declaration as this : If you 
will believe such and such a proposition now, when 
you die you may go to such and such a place. But 
this universe is stored with great moral and spirit- 
ual powers. Do not fight your battle alone ; lay hold 
on those powers and ask their help in the conflict. > 

*' There is no other name under heaven given 
among men whereby we must be saved." What is 



226 S/GJVS OF PROMISE, 

that? A narrow and bigoted declaration? Only one 
door by which men can get into heaven ? Not at all. 
I find a man trying to lift a great stone, which is too 
heavy for his strength ; and I say to him, Get out 
your tackle and pulleys, and then you can lift it. You 
cannot move that stone without a tackle and pulley. 
Is that narrow or bigoted ? No man can take the 
fruits of civilization unless he lays hold on powers 
other than his own ; and no man can take the 
fruit of high, noble, divine, moral, spiritual culture 
unless he reaches out and lays hold of powers that 
are not his own, that make for righteousness. 

And as salvation is not a place to which you are 
going on condition you believe such and such ar- 
ticles, so neither is it a fictitious character that is to 
be imputed to you — as though God says, *^ If you will 
believe such and such things, I will treat you as 
something other than you are.*' Who desires to be 
treated as other than he is ? What I want is not to 
be treated o\\i^x than I am, but to be made other than 
I am. The children in their sport get together and 
dress up an idiot child in irony, with a teacher's cap 
and gown and ruler, and impute learning to him, and 
call him teacher. Is he any more learned than he 
was before ? Men, in a spirit of adulation, bow down 
before a Byron or a Moore or a Burns and declare 
how noble these men are, and impute to them a truth 
and purity and nobleness which they never really 
possessed. Are they less sensual and stained than 
they were because of such imputation ? What we 
want is character, not stage vestments; not to have a 



A POWER UNTO SALVATION, 22/ 

garment of a son put on us, but to be made sons of 
God. And this is the promise of the Gospel: To those 
that receive him he gives power to become sons of 
God. 

So, thirdly, let me say that faith is not belief. It 
is not belief in a long creed, not belief in a short 
creed. It is not belief in thirty-nine articles or forty- 
two articles or two articles or one article. Faith does 
in the moral and spiritual realm that which reason 
does in the physical and material realm. It is simply 
reaching out a heart of sympathy and laying hold 
on the heart of God and receiving strength that God 
pours into the children whose souls are open to re- 
ceive his help. 

There is a company formed, I am told, in New 
York called the Mausoleum Company. They pro- 
pose to build a great structure which will hold ten 
thousand corpses. They have discovered scientific- 
ally that if air of a certain temperature is driven 
through the building the corpses will always be kept 
in the same state of preservation. This is a new 
method of sepulture ; and we are expected to see 
here the bodies of our friends kept in a desiccated: 
semblance to the life that is gone. What fellowship, 
what sociality, what touch of friendship, what vital 
principle of life, would be found in one of these ten 
thousand desiccated corpses ? So scholastic theology 
has taken the truth and life of God, and drained 
them of their life-blood and converted tliem into a 
creed, and entombed them, and then invited men 
into the mausoleum that holds them and said, If you 



228 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

would have life, come into the presence of these des- 
iccated creeds, these bloodless corpses of a long dead 
faith. Men have prayed for bread, and the church 
has given them — well, I will not say a stone — say 
hard-tack ! What virtue is there in the mere declara- 
tion of an opinion? This is not faith. Faith in 
Christ is an appreciation of the quality that is in 
Christ, a sense of his worth, a desire to be like him, a 
resolute purpose to follow after him and attain some- 
thing of the same heroism and grandeur of character 
that he possessed. Faith in God is a sense of the di- 
vine and a trust that there is an infinite pity and an 
eternal helpfulness in the Infinite and Eternal Energy 
from which all things proceed, and a looking to its 
poured-out sympathy and an open heart to receive it. 
O, there are some men in this nineteenth century that 
count themselves without faith who seem to me to 
have the elements of a joyful and true faith ; and 
there are other men who count themselves to be full 
of it that are without it. Does God shut himself up, 
so that no man shall come near him except through 
the avenue of this or that or the other opinion ? Has 
God no sympathy for a skeptic ? Has God no love 
for a heretic ? Has God no helpful hand to reach 
out to an atheist ? "I say unto you. Love your ene- 
mies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that 
hate you, pray for them which despitefully use you 
and persecute you, that you may be the children of 
your Father which is in heaven." And yet we have 
been more than once asked to believe that God 
curses those that curse him, and hates those that 



1 



A POWER UNTO SALVATION. 229 

hate him, and uses despitefully those that use him 
despitefully. 

If there are any in this congregation this morning 
that are seeking truth and pursuing it, and not 
knowing where to find it; if there are any that are 
unable to take this or that or the other creed and 
find rest therein; if there are any of you that have 
been bidden, " Stifle your convictions, throttle your 
doubts, kill your perplexities, only believe — not be- 
cause it is true, but because if you believe you will 
have peace, if you believe you will have comfort, if you 
believe you will have joy *' — I bring you this morn- 
ing a different message. I say to you, first of all, Be 
true to yourself, be true to your own convictions, be- 
lieve nothing that is not true, believe nothing the 
truth of which is not wrought into your own soul. 
You have no right to believe a lie because it will 
cheer you. The very root and foundation of faith is 
belief in truth, fidelity to truth, and no man can 
have fidelity who is unfaithful to his own nature; 
and no God that loves his children will shove from 
him at the last with his great arm any child of his 
that has sought in any literature, in any school, by 
any means whatever, to come to the truth, to come to 
righteousness. 

The child wakes in the night and cries for its 
mother, and the mother comes to take it in her arms, 
but, frightened by the nightmare, the child pushes 
the mother away, thinking the mother to be herself 
some horrible demon of her dream, and still cries 
" Mamma.*' Does her mother lay her down and say, 



230 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

^' When you wake up and find out who I am, I will 
look after you " ? Yet men, as if in their sleep and 
dreams, have gone with clasped hands crying for 
God; and they have looked for him in the old Bible, 
and somehow they did not find him there, and in the 
church, and somehow they did not find him there, and 
in creed and liturgy, and somehow they did not find 
him there. And the very God whom nature and lit- 
erature and history and church and Bible offered 
them, they have pushed away, thinking him no God, 
or a God only to be dreaded, not to be loved. And 
shall I think God thrusts them from him, and says: 
"When you understand me and come to me intelli- 
gently, I will receive you; and not till then"? God 
forbid ! If there be any one in this congregation that 
cares for a Father-God, come to him by what way 
you can. You cannot find him in the Old Testa- 
ment ? I don't see why; I find him there. You can- 
not find him in the New Testament? I don't see 
why; I find him there. You cannot find him in 
Christ? I don't see why; I find him there. But 
halt not; for God has many prophets, and speaks 
through many voices. Go ! Go ! Search for him 
where you will — in Herbert Spencer, or Matthew Ar- 
nold, or Plato, or Marcus Aurelius — where you will 
— only search for him. For he is the Power you 
need; in him alone is the power of an endless, an 
eternal, a true, a divine life. If the Old Testament 
will bring you to him, take the Old Testament. If 
the New Testament will bring you to him, take the 
New Testament. If I can bring you, take me. If I 



A POWER UNTO SALVATION. 23 1 

cannot help you, go elsewhere; but find somewhere 
some prophet, some teacher, some printed page, some 
better voice, that can bring you to the Power that is 
for righteonsness, the Power that is not your own. 

And may this church, as it goes on in its work and 
its life, not count on the things perceived and human 
for its strength; not on social power, not on intellec- 
tual power, not on human muscularity of any kind: 
may it count on the power that is not ourselves, on 
the power of God, of Him who holds all the infinite 
resources of his being that he may pour them out 
into hungry, needy, weakened, impoverished souls, 
and fill them with himself. Amen and amen ! 



XIV. 



CHRIST'S LAW OF LOVE. 



" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." — Matthew xxii. 39. 
"A new commandment give I unto you, That ye love one an- 
other ; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.*' 

John xiii. 34, 

The first of these two commandments is often cited 
as though it were Christ's law of love ; but it is not 
Christ's law of love — it is the Jewish law of justice. 
It was not originated by Jesus ; he borrowed it. It 
was not given by him to his disciples ; it was given 
to the Jews. It was not given as his own ideal of 
love at all ; it was given in answer to a question, 
Which is the greatest commandment of the Jewish 
law ? 

A certain lawyer came, desiring to entangle him. 
The Jews were divided into sects as Christians are 
now divided into sects. They differed in their 
opinion as to which was the greatest and most im- 



The Plymouth Church prayer-meeting of April 6 was occu- 
pied with the question, What is the law or limit of Christian self- 
sacrifice ? After a discussion in which many of the members had 
taken part, the hour for adjournment having arrived, Dr. Abbott 
reserved the expression of his own views, and on the following 
Sunday (April 8, 1889) preached, in continuation of the prayer- 
meeting topic, the following sermon. 

232 



CHRIST S LAW OF LOVE. 233 

portant law, and, instead of concentrating their ener- 
gies on obeying all Jaws, disputed among themselves 
which was the most important to obey. Some said 
the law of the Sabbath ; some said the laws of puri- 
fication ; some said one thing, and some another. 
And this lawyer came to Jesus to find out which sect 
he belonged to — whether he was Baptist, or Metho- 
dist, or Episcopalian, or Congregationalist, or what 
not ; but Jesus, rising above all these questions, and 
going back to the old Jewish law, back of the law of 
ceremonial requirements, and even back of the Ten 
Commandments, gathered the two laws out from 
them, and said, " The two great commandments of 
the law are : Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart and soul and mind and strength; and, 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." It was a 
summary of Jewish law ; it was not his statement 
of the Christian law of life. 

Indeed, if you look narrowly at this command, 
" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," you will 
see that it can hardly be called a law of love at all. 
It is a law of justice. If you will allow the meta- 
physical phrase, it is the subjective expression of that 
law of which the Golden Rule is the objective ex- 
pression. The Golden Rule lays down the law of 
conduct, " Do unto others as you would that others 
do unto you." ** Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself" lays down the analogous rule of character. 
Conduct is of no value except as it springs out of 
character ; and this law, ** Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself," is the expression in terms of charac- 



234 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

ter of that which the Golden Rule expresses in terms 
of conduct. It is really the law of justice, equity, 
equal rights. Pray tell me on what possible ground 
can you maintain the, justice of doing unto others 
what you would not be willing others should do to 
you ? May I love myself above my fellow-men, and 
expect them to do more for me ? On what ground 
am I to single myself out as superior to them, or as 
having claims which are not reciprocal claims by 
them from me ? This Golden Rule is a rule that 
works both ways. It says to me, " You must not de- 
mand from others what you are not willing to do ;" 
and, " You must be willing to do to others what you 
expect them to do to yourself." It regulates our de- 
mands on others by our conduct toward them, and 
our conduct toward them by our demands upon 
them. It is a law of equity, and its interior expres- 
sion, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, is sim- 
ply this : You must have within you a disposition the 
outward expression of which shall be equal, just, and 
fair-dealing. 

It is true that, if we would take this standard and 
live up to it, it would solve a great many perplexing 
problems. Lay it down along the line of life, and 
see in imagination how life's problems would in it 
find their solution. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself. Let the slave-master simply apply that rule, 
and will he not straightway manumit his slave and 
set him free ? Let us apply that rule to the perplex- 
ing problem of immigration. What if you or I were 
living under the harrow in Italy or Germany, and we 



CHRIST'S LAW OF LOVE. 235 

saw the broad acres of America ready with fruitful 
juices to answer to our plow and our hoe, — what 
should we want America to do for us ? Apply it to 
the labor problem. Let all workingmen, banded to- 
gether as Knights of Labor or any other organiza- 
tion, do to the employer as they would have the em- 
ployer do to them; and let the employers, the board 
of directors, the railroad managers, do to their em- 
ployed as they would wish done to themselves, the rela- 
tion being reversed : would there be any labor prob- 
lem left? Our labor problem as it actually presents 
itself in real life is simply this : How can a com- 
munity of men that are dealing with each other 
selfishly live peaceably ? And the answer is. They 
cannot at all. Peace can be brought about only when 
that law of justice which is expressed by the Golden 
Rule and the law, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself, are inwrought into the industrial fabric of 
society. Why, if the girl in the kitchen would al- 
ways act as she would wish to be acted by if she 
were mistress, and the mistress would always act to 
the girl in the kitchen as she would wish to be acted 
by if she were the girl in the kitchen, the greatest 
plague of life would be a plague no longer. 

Nevertheless, this law, Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself, and its concurrent law. Do unto 
others as you would have others do unto you, give 
merely the law of Jewish justice. It is not the stand- 
ard of Christian life. When Jesus came to tell his 
own disciples what his ideal of life was, he gave them 
a very different ideal. What he said was this : *' A 



236 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

new commandment give I unto you, that you love 
one another ;" — if he had stopped there, there would 
have been nothing new. Fifteen centuries before, 
Moses had given the command to love one another ; 
but Jesus went on: — ^^ as I have loved you^ that you 
also love one another." That was what was new in 
the commandment. Jesus Christ by his whole life 
from Bethlehem to Calvary gave a new meaning to 
life ; and then, having unfolded that new definition 
by three years of unparalleled suffering, he cast it 
before the world, and said. That is what God means 
by love : Love one another as I have loved you. 

And did Christ love us as he loved himself? Was 
that the measure of his love ? Let me read you a 
perfectly familiar passage, for it will be more effec- 
tive if I read it in Paul's words than if I gave it in 
my own : " Let this mind be in you which was also 
in Christ Jesus, v/ho being in the form of God thought 
it not robbery to be equal with God, but made him- 
self of no reputation, and took upon him the form of 
a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and 
being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself, 
and became obedient unto death, even the death of 
the cross." That is the life of Christ, and Christ 
held that life up before his disciples and followers, 
saying, " This is the new commandment I give unto 
you, — not that you are to love your neighbor as you 
love yourself, but that you are to love your neighbor 
as I have loved you.'* Did He who left illumination 
and glory that he might live in darkness and be the 
light of the world, love his neighbor only as he loved 



CHRIST'S LAW OF LOVE, 237 

himself ? Did He who had shared the glory of 
eternity with his Father, but emptied himself of repu- 
tation ; He who had possessed dominions and princi- 
palities and powers, but took upon himself the form 
of a servant and was made in the likeness of men, — 
did he love others only as he loved himself? Did 
Christ keep a debtor and creditor account, and put 
on one side what he had paid men, and on the other 
side what he owed men, and carefully see to it that 
he never overpaid the balance ? Did he hold the 
scales with an even hand, and see to it that neither 
end outweighed the other ? Did he live on no higher 
scale, with no grander conception of love, than this, 
that he would do unto others what he would demand 
that others should do unto him ? O, no ! Justice, — 
that is the key-word of Judaism ; Love, — that is the 
key-word of Christianity. Equality, — that is the key- 
word of Judaism ; Self-sacrifice, — that is the key- 
word of Christian living. 

Look for a moment, by way of recall, at three or 
four characteristics of that love which Christ showed 
to his disciples. In the first place, love was the prin- 
ciple of his life. Some men are like Western farm- 
ers who have their one hundred and sixty acres, and 
put one hundred and fifty-nine and a half acres in 
hay and grain and grass for the cattle, and half an 
acre around the door is a garden and grass-plot, and 
a fraction of that the wife cultivates in flowers. So 
men give the larger part of their life to self or justice 
or righteousness or fair-dealing, and they cultivate 
a little plot with flowers which they call love ; (and 



238 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

generally they are very like the Western farmers in 
that they leave the wife to raise all the flowers.) Now, 
love was not thus a mere incident of Christ's life. It 
was the essence of his life. He lived for love. Love 
was the inspiration of his life. From beginning to 
end the problem with him was always, not how 
much he might get out of humanity, nor how he 
could hold an even balance with mankind, but how 
much he could pour out of himself into the hearts 
and lives of others ; not how much he could enrich 
himself, but how much by his own self-sacrifice he 
could enrich others. As a river rises in the moun- 
tains and flows down from its cradle to its grave in 
the ocean, and takes along in its journey the drain- 
age of all the valleys and the sewage of all the towns 
and cities, and swallows up the filth, and gives back 
healing and health, and waters the valleys while it is 
draining them, and turns the busy mill, and never 
asks what it can receive, but only what it can give, 
so flows the life of Christ from that Bethlehem cradle 
to that Calvary grave, taking men's burdens, their 
sorrows, their tears, their sins, and giving them back 
hope, comfort, health, righteousness, love, — a river of 
mercy from the beginning to the end. 

It was a wise love, not a mere sentiment, not a mere 
blind enthusiasm. It was well considered. He meas- 
ured men and adapted his gifts to their capacities. 
He did not cast his pearls before swine. He meas- 
ured himself, and did not heedlessly use up his pow- 
ers in ill-adjusted service. It is sometimes said that 
we ought to forget ourselves. Well, that is both true 



CHRIST S LAW OF LOVE. 239 

and false. Christ did not forget that some care of 
self is necessary for the largest, truest, and noblest 
self-sacrifice. When with his disciples he had come 
near the city, he did not hesitate to stop because he 
was tired, and rest himself, while he sent his disciples 
forward to do the lesser service, to bring back food 
for their common need. He hired a little fishing- 
boat, and used to go off and take exercise on the lake 
for rest. He called his disciples to go abroad with 
him for a trip across the lake, that he might hide 
himself in the wilderness ; when the people followed 
after him, he came back across the sea, and went to 
Phoenicia to seek hiding in that foreign province ; 
when he could not be hid there, he went up into the 
northern mountains, that he might there find rest, 
and in rest strength for new work. No ! love is not 
always self-forgetfulness. The great orator crosses 
the ocean for rest, reaches England, is asked to speak 
a word for his native country, refuses, turns his back 
upon the invitation, crosses tHe Channel, seeks for six 
weeks' or two months* rest and recuperation on the 
Continent and among the mountains of Switzerland, 
goes back to England again, is again asked, and theuy 
— having acquired a reservoir of strength, not by self- 
forgetfulness, but by a wise self-thoughtfulness, — 
speaks words that rouse all the middle-class sentiment 
of England, and saves our sorely bestead Nation from 
international attack. 

Christ's love was not, either, a mere sentimental 
love. It was not a love that cannot bear to look upon 
suffering, or that intervenes to stop all suffering. It 



240 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

was not a love that could not rebuke and reprove. 
There was flash in the e3"es of his love, and there was 
thunder, sometimes, in the tones of his love. He that 
loved could ring out denunciation against the Phari- 
sees, a " Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
crites!" He that loved could look into the eyes of 
John, the beloved disciple, who was to lean on his 
bosom at the supper-table, and could say to him, 
" You shall drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and 
you shall be baptized with the baptism that I am to 
be baptized with." He could forecast the passion 
that was to be his mother's passion as well as his own, 
and still enter upon it. He could know that the cru- 
cifixion was to enter the heart of his mother ; could 
foresee the hour when the broken-hearted mother 
and the broken-hearted disciples would stand, hand 
in hand, under the dark shadow of the cross ; and, 
though knowing that the cup he was to drink would 
press with its bitterness on the lips of those he loved, 
yet could march with his face steadfastly set to Jeru- 
salem. We sometimes love so weakly, so feebly, with 
so superficial a love, that we seek to free our loved 
ones from all suffering ; but not so with Jesus. He 
loved so strongly, so well, that he dared not only take 
suffering himself, but also dared put it upon others 
whom he loved. The highest of all self-sacrifice is 
that sacrifice that comes when we crucify our love for 
our higher love's sake. And so Jesus loved. 

He loved, too, with infinite patience and long-suf- 
fering. He loved not only with benevolence — that is, 
well-wishing to all men, and with pity — that is, with 



CHRISl^'S LAW OF LOVE, 24I 

love to those that are in suffering, but with mercy 
— -that is, love to those who do not deserve love. He 
loved when love and conscience seemed to antagonize 
each other. Sometimes our love sings our conscience 
to sleep ; and then, when we have gotten our con- 
science to sleep, we love men in spite of their wrong- 
doing ; and sometimes our conscience throttles our 
love, and then we condemn them in spite of our pity. 
But to condemn a man, and at the same time love 
him, — that is the highest exhibition of conscience and 
love. It is very hard for a man who is the soul of 
truth to love a liar. It is very hard for a business man 
who is the soul of honor to love a fraudulent bank- 
rupt. It is very hard for an industrious man to love 
a lazy one. It is well-nigh impossible for a thrifty 
New England housewife to love a shiftless woman. 
Christ loved the men and women against whom his 
conscience rose in indignation. His conscience was 
alive with indignation, and his heart was alive with 
love at the same time. Recall how he treated Judas 
Iscariot. He knew who should betray him, and yet 
washed his betrayer's feet ; gave the suggestion that 
one of his own disciples should betray him, as if by that 
suggestion to recall Judas to his better self ; when that 
failed, picked out for him, as though he were a special 
friend, after the manner of the Oriental feast, a choice 
morsel, and passed it to him that He might quicken 
love in a heart barren of love ; when love had failed 
to win him by such love-tokens, sought to win liim 
by warning : " What thou doest, do quickly ;** and 
finally, when the traitor came into the garden to be- 



242 SIGXS OF PROMISE, 

tray him with a kiss, met him with no other reproach 
than the inquiry : *^ Friend ! betrayest thou the Son 
^ , of man with a kiss ?" This was the way — ah, no ! how 
can one begin to tell the way in which Christ loved his 
own — Christ, whose life was a self-sacriifice from the 
beginning to the end ; Christ, who loved with a love 
so permanent, so deep, so patient, so wise, so strong, 
so beautiful, so masterful ! Then he said to you and 
to me, '* This is the commandment that I give you, 
that you love one another as I have loved you,'' But 
we blot the story of his love out of our book, and go 
back fifteen centuries to the lesson of love which God 
gave to the human race when it was sitting in the 
primary school and had not as yet learned what love 
meant, and was scarce ready to learn what justice 
meant, — and call that Christ's law of love. 

There is no better interpreter of Jesus than John ; 
and John has told us in his epistle what he under- 
stood to be Christ's law of love. " Hereby know we 
love : because he laid down his life for us ; and we 
ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." Not 
die for the brethren. We may be called to death, 
and we may not ; but we are to lay down our 
lives for the brethren. It is a comparatively easy 
thing to die for other people ; but to live for them, 
— to lie down in the muddy road and let other men 
walk over you, to stand and let other people climb 
upon you, to be underneath your equal, to be the 
means by which they climb to preferment and re- 
ward, — that is hard. And that is what Christ did, 
and what Christ held up as the ideal for his children 
evermore. 



CHRIST'S LAW OF LOVE. 243 

Impossible ! do you say ? Well, then, let us say 
frankly it is impossible to be a Christian. Impossi- 
ble ? Then impossible to follow Christ. Not human 
nature ? No, it is not human nature. It is divine 
nature : and that is the very object of Christianity — 
to confer upon all who will be the disciples of Christ 
a divine nature, not a mere human nature ; that they 
may be lifted up out of the plane of the human, and 
walk in the plane and atmosphere of the divine ever- 
more. And yet I think life is full of illustrations 
making it clear that the ideal I am trying to put 
before you this morning is no impossible ideal. 
Others than Christ have walked along this path and 
illustrated this standard. Will any man say that 
Paul loved others only as himself, — Paul, who suffered 
perils and scourgings and imprisonment and ship- 
wreck and obloquy, in order that he might carry the 
Gospel of Christ to the barbarians, finally suffering, 
for others' sake, martyrdom ? Will any man say that 
Luther loved others only as himself? that William of 
Orange, who refused all seductive offers of court 
emolument and preferment that he might give liberty 
to his countrymen, loved others only as himself ? 
Will any man say that Washington and the heroes of 
Valley Forge loved others only as themselves ? O, 
let the green graves of Gettysburg and Antietam an- 
swer if there have not been seen in our own time and 
in our own generation men following the cross of 
Christ and loving their fellow-men and their nation 
better than they loved themselves, taking woundings 
and death and prison that they might give liberty 



244 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

and life and joy to future generations ! They did not 
know, many of them, that they were following Christ, 
or that the spirit of Christ had been born in their 
hearts. This is the law of our life. Not for pulpits 
and prayer-meetings only, but for life. It is the law 
that binds the household together, and makes it the 
refuge of love. It is the law for the banker in his 
counting-room, and the lawyer in his office, and the 
merchant in his store, and the employer in his factory, 
and the editor in his sanctum, — even though he be the 
editor of a religious newspaper ! It is the law of uni- 
versal life — this law of service, this law of self-sacri- 
ficing service. 

And I think, though we are far from fulfilling it, 
there is a great deal more of this self-denying love in 
the world than perhaps we are wont to think. I do 
not know; when I read sermons and essays and cynical 
novels, I am led almost to think that other people's 
experience is different from mine ; but everywhere I 
go it seems to me I find — not, indeed, without selfish- 
ness — a self-sacrificing love ; not without cold blasts 
from a cold world, nevertheless a tropical atmosphere 
and a glorious sunshine. There is such heaven in 
love ! There is such a joy in the service of love ! 
There is such an inspiration in the communion of 
love ! We get most by loving ; least by demanding. 

I came among you here a few months ago, fearing, 
dreading to come, and saying to myself, A congrega- 
tion that has been ministered to as this congrega- 
tion will be exacting : it will demand more than I 
can possibly give. But you have received me here 



CHRIST'S LAW OF LOVE. 245 

into a glowing atmosphere of love ; you have exacted 
nothing and you have given much. 

Friends sometimes say to me^ Are you not working 
too hard ? No ! I am being borne on the wings of 
love, and work that has such love to fructify it is 
easy. A friend of mine who spent a winter recently 
in Southern California told me that a rosebush grew 
up by his door that he thought had a million roses 
on it. His mind, it must be confessed, was imagina- 
tive rather than mathematical ; but we will take the 
million for an indefinite quantity. And I have im- 
agined a poor rosebush in Maine, in a sterile soil and 
a cold atmosphere, struggling to give forth a dozen 
roses, and calling across the continent to the Califor- 
nia rose, "Are you not working too hard, poor rose- 
bush ?" and the rosebush answering, " No ! for it is 
easier in a genial climate to give unnumbered roses 
than in a sterile soil and a wintry wind to give half a 
dozen." 

I do not often think of these reporters before me 
when I am talking to you, but there is one word I 
would like them to take down to-day, and send it 
out and print it in every newspaper in the country. 
And it is this message : Christian churches, wherever 
you are, if you get too little out of your ministers, 
exact of them less and love them more. May God 
teach us all to be something better than just Jews, 
trying to love our neighbors as ourselves : rather to 
be deep-hearted Christians, trying to love our neigh- 
bors even as Christ loved us. 



XV. 

THE PEACE OF GOD. 

•*And the peace of Gcd, which passeth a" understanding, shall 
keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.'" — Phi.itpian^ iv. 7, 

If peace is a grace, it cannot be described as a 
characteristic American grace. If growth in peace 
is growth in divine childhood, then in so far this age 
lacks divine childhood. 

We have other virtues, and we are wont to plume 
ourselves upon them; and we have a right to care for 
them and, in some sense, to be proud of them. We 
are active, energetic, vigorous; we are courageous; 
we do not lack bravery on the platform and in the 
pulpit or in the press. Our teachers have in large 
measure the courage of their convictions. The vir- 
tues that apparently belong with strife and battle 
grow in American atm.osphere. The virtues that be- 
long with conflict and toil in the mine, in the factory, 
in the shop, in the household, grow naturally on 
American soil. 

But I do not think that peace is very common in 
America, — neither the peaceful heart nor the peace- 
ful face is very common. If we trust at all the rep- 
resentations in our newspapers, where domestic diflS- 



Plymouth Church, Sunday morning, November 4, i883. 

246 



THE PEACE OF GOD, 247 

culties are emblazoned abroad with such shameful 
frequency, peace in the home is none too common. 
If you will stand on Broadway and look at the faces 
of the people that are going up and down, you will 
see care written there, eagerness written there, energy 
written there, force written there; but how often will 
you see peace ? Even in our recreations we are loath 
to take peace. It is the drama which stirs men and 
excites them that placards at its door, "^ Standing 
room only." It is the romance that is intense and 
creates tempestuous emotions in the reader's heart 
that sells by tens of thousands. I wonder, as I look 
on your faces this morning, how many there are of 
you that enjoy quietness and repose; how many there 
are of you that are glad to get an hour to be abso- 
lutely by yourselves; how many there are of you that 
find yourselves good company for yourselves. 

And yet the Bible puts great emphasis on peace, 
and makes it in some measure a test and standard of 
character. On the one side it declares that the 
wicked know no peace. It would, perhaps, be too 
much to say that those who know no peace are there- 
fore wicked, although we might well consider whether 
there is not a truth on that side of the affirmation. 
Laying aside the Old Testament, and taking the New 
only, we find Christ's advent inaugurated with the 
angers song of " Peace on earth, good- will to men;" 
Christ's message to the repentant sinner, ** Go in 
peace;" Christ's lamentation over apostate Jerusalem, 
that she does not know what belongs to her peace; 
Christ's last gift to his disciples just before the cul- 



248 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

mination of his passion, — a gift of peace. We find 
peace coupled in the apostolic benediction with 
grace, interwoven in the apostolic promises of the 
kingdom with righteousness and joy, declared to be 
a fruit of the spiritual mind, a gift of God, an evi- 
dence of the indwelling Christ, a means of sanctifica- 
tion, and access to it afforded by faith. And, finally, 
in the picture of the perfect beatification of the 
heavenly rest, the sea, on earth tossed by perpetual 
tempests and ever throwing up mire and dirt, be- 
comes a sea of glass, whose pacific surface no wind 
shall rufile, and on which no cloud shall cast a 
shadow.* 

So, then, the state of individual or national or 
church experience that lacks this quality of peace is 
seriously lacking. I sometimes like to take words 
and trace them to their meaning — their original 
meaning — and so find the significance of virtue on 
the one side and vice on the other. And if you will 
take the words that represent that which impinges 
upon and disturbs our peace, you will find nothing 
but weakness and imperfection wrought into them. 
** Anxiety " is torture. ^^ Care '* is only another word 
for pain. He is " distracted '* who is pulled in differ- 
ent directions, like a man torn by wild horses, or a 
wayfarer lost in the woods and not knowing which 
path to take. We are " perplexed " when we are en- 

* Luke ii. 14; vii. 50; viii 48; xix. 42; — John xiv. 27; xvi. 33; 
XX. 19, 20; — Romans i. 7; ii. 10; v. i; viii 6; xiv. 17; xv. 33; 
— Gal. v. 22; — Ephes. ii. 14; iv. 3; — Col. iii. 15; — i Thess. v. 
23; iii. 16. 



^ 



THE PEACE OF GOD. 249 

tangled, like a fly caught in the spider's web. So 
every word that represents want of peace represents, 
not a strength, but a weakness; not a virtue, but a 
vice. 

I want this morning to repeat to you a little, very 
simply, some things which the Bible seems to me to 
say about peace. 

In the first place, the peace which the Bible com- 
mends to us is the peace of God. It is God's own 
peace. I think, perhaps, we shall best realize that 
without peace we fall away from our godly estate, if 
we realize in what state God forever lives. Can you 
think of the plowshare of care running a furrow 
across God's brow ? Can you think of anxiety brood- 
ing on God's heart*? Can you think of perplexity en- 
tangling God in its meshes? Can you think of God 
hurrying and worrying and fretting and perplexed 
lest he shall not get this or that or the other thing 
done in time ? Can you think of God as harassed, 
bearing a burden too great for him to bear, and 
v/eighted down by the very armor he is carrying? 
O, no, no ! we know that God lives and works in a 
perpetual peace. He is light. In him there is no 
variableness or shadow of turning. 

Did you ever think how the light works always in 
peace ? For what is the most potent thing in nature ? 
Not the earthquake. Not the lightning. Not the 
thunderbolt. Not the wind, with its vociferation and 
its noise. Light! All the forces of nature are born 
of light and are carried earthward in the sunbeam. 
It is light that gives the wind its wings. It is light 



2 so SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

that gives the waterfall its force. It is light that 
equips all maehinery with its vast powers. Light is 
the potential element in you that makes you live. 
Wrap the world in eternal darkness, and it would be 
wrapped in eternal death and inactivity. But the 
light sounds no drum as it marches on its way; sends 
forth no clarion note, of triumph or of defeat. The 
light marches noiselessly. Its sandals are of satin. 
No listening ear can catch the tread of its footstep. 
The wind howls against the sunbeam, and the sun- 
beam shines on undiverted by so much as the ten- 
millionth fraction of an inch. The cloud puts itself 
athwart the sunbeam, and the sunbeam shines 
through the cloud with a diffused instead of a radiant 
light, or turns it into golden glory by its magnificent 
shining. There is nothing that can divert it; noth- 
ing that can thwart it; nothing that can disturb it. 
It moves upon its way in eternal quietness and calm- 
ness. The greatest tempest that ever rocks the 
earth is but a few feet in height as compared with 
the eternal silence and the eternal ethereal substance 
of light in which the globe moves around in its ap- 
pointed orbit. And so we live in God, if we do but 
know it, — God, who is a perpetual light and a per- 
petual peace. O, when anxiety plows into your 
heart, when perplexity entangles you, when troubles 
gather around you and upon you, think for a mo- 
ment — for a moment ? think for one half-hour — of 
the eternal quietude and peace of your Father. Come 
into his presence, and from him take peace. 

For this peace that is of God belongs to God, is 



I 



THE PEACE OF GOD. 2$ I 

God's gift to us, when we are willing to take God's 
gift. We are continually trying to find peace by get- 
ting God to will as we will. But not so does the soul 
ever find peace. We do find peace when we bring 
ourselves to will as God wills. When we lift up our 
prayers to God to get him to do what we think best, 
then we struggle, and are worried and worn. When 
we lift up our prayers to God that he should make us 
will as he wills, then we find the way to peace and 
quietness, and in quietness and in confidence we find 
strength. 

If we will reflect upon it, we shall see that all cares 
come from the lower life. If we can rise into the 
higher experience and walk with God, we walk also 
in peace. You fear bankruptcy and sickness and 
pain and dishonor; but are not these all things that 
live only in the lower life and have no place in the 
higher one ? Ah, if my only thoughts were, How 
shall I best serve God ? then what odds to me, to 
what service he calls me ! If he says, " Show how 
with wealth a rich Christian lives," I will take that. 
And if he says, " Show how in poverty a poor Chris- 
tian can meet poverty," I will take that. If he gives 
me children, and says, *' Show how a father can live 
and love and rejoice and bring his children up to the 
love of God," I will take that. And if he reaches 
down that hand of love from heaven and takes one 
child after another and one life after another from 
my home, and says to me, " I want you to show how 
a Christian can live and love and sorrow, how he can 
resign to me the trust I had given to him," I will take 



252 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

that. I am not saying what I actually should do; 
but what I would do, if I did what I wish I might. 
For could T have this experience, that my will is al- 
ways God's will and my wish always God's wish, 
trouble could not trouble me, perplexity could not 
perplex me, care could not worry me. What differ- 
ence, whether I am to root down in the earth where 
the worms crawl, or am up on the branch where the 
birds sing, if only I am helping make God's tree? 
What odds, whether I am the stone down in the 
foundation where no eye ever sees me, or the cross 
on top where the sunlight never leaves me from sun- 
rise to sunset, if I am helping make God's church ? 

The peace of God is the peace God gives to those 
who are trying to do God's service, and so a peace 
we come into by faith ; not by that miserable pre- 
tense of faith which consists in believing that God 
will do what we want him to do, but in that real faith 
which links us to God, and makes us one with him in 
the purpose and desire of our living. We come into 
peace when we rise above the tempest. We come into 
peace when we go down — following the figure of that 
beautiful poem of Mrs. Stowe — down beneath the 
storm-line, with the still " Sabbath of that deeper 
sea." O, it is possible so to live that that storm 
shall not, after all, disturb you though you are in the 
midst of it. It is possible even in its midst to escape 
it, in thought, in feeling, in aspiration, in power, in 
the experience of your heart and soul. 

I have stood on the top of the mountain, and have 
seen the clouds gather round its top, and have seen 



THE PEACE OF GOD, 253 

them settle down upon the valley below, and have 
heard the thunder muttering there, and have seen the 
lightning-flashes playing below my feet, and have 
seen the birds come flying up through the clouds, 
singing on the mountain-top, while the thunder was 
threatening and the lightning was playing havoc in 
the valley. So learn to fly above these lower earthly 
storms that are so low and lie only in the hollows, 
and find that song always to be found in the moun- 
tain-top and in the sunlight. It is possible. We can 
do it. Men and women have done it. 

This peace that I have talked to you about this 
morning is not a peace from trouble ; and when we 
try to find the peace from trouble we always fail. 
It is peace in trouble. It is hinted at in that word 
of Christ, ^^ In the world you shall have tribulation ; 
but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world." 
We would have God lead us through no dark valley 
and shadow of death. But he gives us no promise 
of that kind. What he says is this : ^^ Though you 
walk through the valley of the shadow of death, my 
rod and my staff they shall comfort you.'* We come 
to the deep water, and shrink back, saying, " Not 
into that river, not into that river !" We come to the 
furnace of fire, saying, *^ Not into that flame, not into 
that flame !" But the answer is this : " Though thou 
walkest through the deep waters, they shall not over- 
flow thee ; though thou walkest through the flame, 
it shall not consume thee." And so we are to find 
our peace, not by exemption from trouble, but by 
living in the midst of trouble. Yea, baring our 



254 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

breast to the trouble, yet rejoicing in it, for they 
that are exercised thereby are they that follow after 
peace and find it. 

O, if I could only tell this story to you as it has 
been told me sometimes, — yes ! as it has been told 
me this very past week, by the radiant faces, and the 
unclouded hearts that were filled with peace, and the 
home that was sweet with the note and song and 
radiance of peace in a time of great sorrov/, — you 
would go away saying, I will seek this peace and 
pursue it. Last August, as we sailed out of Queens- 
town Harbor in the steamer, we went into the teeth 
of a great gale. The wind was howling, the rain 
was beating upon the deck of our steamer, the great 
waves were running and every now and then sweep- 
ing over our lower decks. And we sat there under 
the awning, protected from the rain, looking out on 
the waters, and on the Mother Carey chickens riding 
on the crest of the waves, in the midst of the tempest. 
Every now and then a great wave would dash over a 
little bird, and it would seem to be gone, and then in 
a moment there it was again, shaking its head and 
wings and flinging off the spray and riding in the 
storm and exulting in it. " O little bird, you have 
been a messenger of the good God. Teach me how, 
when the time of tempest and storm shall come to 
me — teach me how to ride on the waves, to be over- 
whelmed and yet not be overwhelmed, to shake off 
the trouble and yet live in the trouble. Teach me 
that lesson, little bird!" And I bring the message of 



THE PEACE OF GOD. 2$$ 

the little bird to you. Will you not take a message 
from the little bird you cannot take from me ? 

My peace give I unto you, said Christ. I think I 
see him now, standing in the midst of that howling 
multitude clamorous for his death ; the blood is 
streaming from his back ; the crown of thorns is 
upon him, and the blood is streaming from those 
wounds also. But cruder and harder to be borne 
than wounds of scourge or wounds of thorns are the 
wounds that enter the heart of love, when it feels the 
storm of hate and fury and passion let loose to work 
its worst. And yet he is at peace. And I see the 
far-away look in his deep blue eye, and the heavenly 
calm on his placid countenance ; for he is in the 
midst of the tempest, but unperturbed by it. Peace- 
ful ! peaceful ! And this is the peace he gives to us 
his disciples. 

Grant to us, O Thou that wert at peace in the 
tempest, thine own spirit of faith and trust, that in 
our loneliness we, too, may not be alone, but, in the 
companionship of God, may have the peace of God 
thou givest to thy followers! 



XVI. 
WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 

*' God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times 
past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken 
unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by 
whom also he made the worlds." — Heb, i. i, 2. 

I PROPOSE to speak to you this morning about the 
Bible. I shall not argue t^e question of its inspira- 
tion and authority, as though I were speaking to an 
audience of men and women who do not believe in 
the Bible, nor enter into any refined discussion re- 
specting the nature of inspiration or how it differs 
from genius. I have in mind especially the young 
people in my charge, and I wish to give them some 
practical thoughts respecting the nature of the Bible, 
and the proper way to use it to get the largest 
amount of benefit out of it. I have selected this text, 
not because it covers the ground of what I wish to 
say, but because it suggests the first thing I wish to 
say — clears the way for what is to follow. 

First, let me read to you Dean Alford's interpreta- 
tion of this text. Both phrases — " at sundry times*' 
and *' in divers manners " — set forth the imperfection 
of the Old Testament revelations. *^ They were vari- 



Ply mouth Church, Sunday morning, May 12, 1889. 

256 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 257 

ous in nature and in form, fragments of the whole 
truth, presented in manifold forms, in shifting hues 
of separated color. Christ himself is the full revela- 
tion of God, himself the pure light, uniting in his 
one Person the whole spectrum." 

The first thing I want to say to you, then, is this : 
You are not to look in the Bible for a complete and 
comprehensive presentation of divine truth. You 
are not to look in it for a revelation or disclosure of 
science of any kind, physical or metaphysical, natural 
or supernatural. You are not to look in it for any 
sort of ology — geology, or chronology, or physiology, 
or even theology. It is not at all a scientific treatise. 
It does not aim or purport so to be. 

Nor are you to regard the Bible as an infallible 
book of equal value and equal authority in all its ut- 
terances and all its parts ; as a book *^ without any 
intermixture of error." An infallible book would re- 
quire, first of all, that the writers should be infallibly 
informed as to the truth ; in the second place, that 
they should be able to utter it infallibly ; in the third 
place^ that they should have a language for the com- 
munication of their ideas which was an infallible 
Vehicle of thought ; in the fourth place, that, if they 
died, the manuscripts in which their thoughts were 
contained should be infallibly preserved, without 
any intermixture of error, through the ages after 
their death ; fifthly, that, if the language in which 
they wrote were changed, the translators should be 
themselves capable of giving an infallible translation ; 
sixthly, that, if the Book were to be infallibly ap- 



258 S/GATS OF PROMISE. 

plied to the actual conditions of life, men who inter- 
preted and applied these principles should be infalli- 
ble interpreters. And, finally, it would require that 
the men who received should be able infallibly to ap- 
prehend what was given. Nothing less than all these 
combined would or could constitute an infallible 
revelation of truth ; and it is needless to say these 
are not combined in the Bible. Whether the writers 
infallibly understood the truth or not, they did not 
have any language capable of communicating infalli- 
bly their ideas. Their manuscripts were not infalli 
bly preserved. Their language did die out of the 
human race, and there were not provided infallible 
translators to take their places. There are no infal- 
lible interpreters and appliers of the truth. And the 
men and women who receive it are not capable of 
infallibly understanding it. 

Mankind have wanted something to save them the 
trouble of thinking. So they have invented, first, an 
infallible church, that they may go to the priest or 
the council and ask to be told infallibly what is truth, 
and may accept it and act upon it without the trouble 
of thinking about it. But this infallible church has 
led the world into all sorts of pernicious error. And 
then, throwing aside the infallible church, and still 
wanting something to take its place, they have taken 
up the notion that the Bible is a book that is infalli- 
ble. But there is no better ground for the one faith 
than for the other. What God has given the human 
race in the Bible is not a substitute for thought, but 
something which will stimulate men to think. The 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 2$g 

treasure of truth in the Bible is not a minted treasure 
with the stamp of the divine image upon it. It is 
like the gold hid in the bosom of the mountain. It 
must be mined, dug out with the alloy with which it 
is intermixed, washed, burned in the furnace, and the 
stamp must be put upon it before it is ready for 
currency. 

But as soon as this is done, the process begins over 
again. The Bible yields its treasure only to him who 
digs for it as for a hid treasure ; the promise of the 
Bible is only to him who seeks and knocks. No age 
can do this seeking, this knocking, for another. The 
early church goes to the Bible, and mines its precious 
metal, — and issues the Nicean Creed. Questions 
change, issues alter, new thoughts and conditions 
arise, — and it produces the Athanasian Creed. Is that 
a finality ? Not at all. A few centuries pass by, and 
we have the Westminster Confession, and the decrees 
of the Synod of Dort, and the Thirty-nine Articles, 
and the Heidelberg Catechism. And now new intel- 
lectual conditions present new problems, and the old 
currency is no longer available ; it is out of date, like 
the paper money of the American Revolution ; and 
we begin again to search the Bible anew for its 
teaching on new questions. The structure and the 
history of the Bible alike demonstrate that what God 
has given us here is not a substitute for thought, but 
an incentive to thinking. Lessing said, *^ If God 
were to offer me in one hand Truth and in the other 
Search for Truth, I would accept Search for Truth." 
What God gives us in the Bible is Search for Truth. 



26o S/G.VS OF PROMISE. 

Some of you older people will say, ^^ Why do you 
say these things to the young people ? Is there any 
danger that the young people in your congregation 
will reverence the Bible too much ? Is there any 
danger that they will love it too much ? Is there 
any danger that they will pay to it too great a rever- 
ence ?'* No, there is not. But there is danger that 
they will pay it a mistaken reverence, an unintelli- 
gent and superstitious reverence, an idolatrous rever- 
ence. There is danger that they w411 not know the 
object for which this book has been given them, or 
the use to which it is to be put by them. There is 
danger that they w^ill found their faith on a false 
foundation ; and that then, when later discussion 
and larger intelligence come to take that foundation 
away from them, they will think the whole book has 
gone. If there are any here to-day who think the 
Bible is an infallible revelation of truth, without any 
intermixture of human error, I have no desire to dis- 
turb that faith. There are ten thousand influences at 
work disturbing it ; it will be destroyed soon enough. 
Only I wish to say this : I hold no such faith. And 
when it appears that the world was not made in six 
days, and that the first chapter of Genesis is a 
poem ; and when it appears, still further, that the 
human race is far more than six thousand years old, 
and that the second and third chapters of Genesis are 
allegory or myth or tradition ; and when it still fur- 
ther appears (if it shall do so) that Moses was not the 
author of the Levitical code, nor Daniel of the Book 
of Daniel, nor Solomon of Ecclesiastes, or that the 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 26 1 

Story of Jonah and the whale is an allegory and not 
history, my faith in the Bible is in no wise weakened, 
my love for the Bible no wise destroyed, and the 
power of the Bible over my heart, conscience, and 
life not one single whit lessened. 

What, then, is the Bible ? It is a selection of liter- 
ature evolved out of eighteen centuries of human 
life, comprising all various literary forms, written by 
men of all various types and temperaments, without 
concord, without mutual understanding, without 
knowing that they were making a book that was to 
last for all time. 

Nations as well as individuals have their types of 
character. The Greek was a thinker, the Roman a 
law-giver, the Hebrew a worshiper. We borrow 
our philosophy and our art from Greece, our law 
and our executive models from Rome, our ethical 
inspiration and our religious faith from Palestine. 
Measured by modern standards, the life of the He- 
brews was not spiritual ; but in all spiritual ele- 
ments it was far in advance of the life of contempo- 
raneous peoples.* From the time of Abraham, the 



*"The fundamental idea of this religion [the Semitic] was the 
supremacy of one common master in heaven and earth. Elohim is 
everywhere ; his breath is universal life ; through Elohim every- 
thing lives. No doubt this Elohim of doubtful identity is still far 
removed from the just and moral God of the prophets ; but we can 
see that he will in due course become so, whereas Varouna, Zeus, 
and Diespiter will never succeed in becoming honest and just, and 
will eventually be abandoned by those who worship them." 

— Renan, •' History of the People of Israel.*' 



262 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

dominant though struggling faith of the Hebrew 
people held, with constantly increasing clearness of 
perception and tenacity of grasp, to the conception 
of one God, a God of righteousness, a God whose 
approval could be won only by righteous living, a 
God gradually perceived to be one who had sympa- 
thy as well as justice, and who not only punished 
sin and rewarded virtue, but who helped struggling 
virtue to its victory. Out of the life of the Hebrew 
nation there emerged prophets who were themselves 
the spiritual teachers of a spiritual people ; and they, 
from time to time, gave forth that truth which God 
had wrought into their experience and as they were 
able to receive it. Out of all their deliverances — 
many more than have been preserved — there survived 
that which was fittest to survive. No one Church 
Council, no one ordained potentate or priest, selected 
them, but the ages took these utterances of eighteen 
centuries and shook them in the sieve of time, and all 
that was light was floated off by the water, and all 
that was worthy to remain was retained. This is, 
briefly put, the history of the Bible. It is a collec- 
tion of the most spiritual utterances, of the most 
spiritual men, of the most spiritual race, of past 
time. You are to come to it as such a collection. 
It is as such that you are to study and take advan- 
tage of it — as such a record of spiritual experiences. 

I. In the first place, then, in view of this generic 
statement, I urge on you to have your Bible — not 
merely a Bible, but your Bible, Mr. Shearman has a 
copy of the Bible which Mr. Beecher carried for some- 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 26$ 

thing like forty years — perhaps still more — with his 
markings scattered through it. It is more than a 
Bible — it is Mr. Beecher's Bible ; and the pencil-marks 
in it tell the story of his own spiritual experience, 
while they emphasize the spiritual experiences of the 
ages that are past. I have a little pocket Bible that I 
have carried for thirty-six years. It has been re- 
bound twice. In that Bible I can find any text or 
any passage that I have fondness for or familiarity 
with. Finding that it was wearing out and would 
not stand the perpetual use, I procured a different 
form of the same edition — another Bagster Bible. 
For the Bagster Bible has this advantage : all the 
copies, whether large or small, have fac-simile pages, 
so that the same text will be found in the same place 
on the same page, of any edition. Thus familiarity 
with one gives a certain familiarity with all. 

It is not only home that is sacred — it is your home. 
There are many houses that are finer, but none so 
dear. There are other springs that give perhaps 
better water, but none so sweet as comes from the old 
oaken bucket. There are other gardens that have 
rarer exotics, but no garden the flowers of which 
are so fragrant as those of your own garden. Ten 
thousand associations cluster around about it, and a 
homely object in your home means to you that 
which it can mean to none else, and that which noth- 
ing else can mean to you. So, have your own Bible, 
into which your life shall be woven, around which 
your spiritual associations shall cluster, and which 
shall become sacred to you, not so much for the voice 



264 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

that spake to Abraham, to Moses, to David, to Isaiah, 
or Paul, so many centuries ago, but for the voice that 
has spoken to you — through Abraham, Moses, David, 
Isaiah, or Paul — in your own life-experience. 

II. Use your Bible. I think there are some persons 
who imagine that there is a sacred quality in a family 
Bible lying on the center-table, and who have the 
same sort of regard for the book that lies there that 
some other people have for the value of a horsehoe 
nailed over the door : and the one is as good as the 
other. The Bible that is unopened is at best of value 
only as a respectful profession that you are not ex- 
actly an infidel. The Bible that is to lay hold on 
you is a Bible that you must lay hold upon. 

Familiarize yourself with the Bible. It is a coy 
acquaintance. It does not let every one into its 
heart, or disclose to the chance acquaintance the 
secret of its power. You must love it. If you are 
to love it you must acquaint yourself with it. You 
must take it with you into your experience. You 
must make it the man of your counsel in your per- 
plexity ; you must go to it for comfort in your sor- 
row ; you must find in it inspiration when the dead- 
ening process of life has brought you earthward ; 
you must seek in it those experiences for which your 
own heart and soul hunger. You must let it write 
itself across your heart. So, and only so, can you 
make this Bible a useful, life-giving book to you. 

III. You must, in your use of the Bible, look be- 
hind the book to the truth which is in the book, and 
which really constitutes the book. Every book that 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 265 

is worth anything, at least every book of value in 
the moral realm, is like a man, — it has both a body 
and a soul. The body is not merely that which the 
printer's art or the binder's art has given to it; the, 
language, the phraseology, the literary form and* 
structure, — all these belong to the bone and sinew and 
blood and muscle of the book. But behind that bone 
and sinew and muscle there is a soul, a spirit; and 
he who means to get the value of the book must 
look back of the form into the truth that lies behind 
the outer body. 

Some one has said that some theological students 
lose their religion while they are getting their the- 
ology. It is not an uncommon exchange. It is cer- 
tain that many men in the theological seminary im- 
agine that they are studying the Bible when they are 
only submitting the body to anatomical dissection. 
Take the body and lay it on the table; run your 
knife through it; separate it into its parts; examine 
it with microscopic care and accuracy. When you 
have done this, what do you know of the man ? 
When you have weighed the brain, what do you un- 
derstand of the mind ? When you have learned that 
the brain of Daniel Webster was bigger than the 
average brain, what do you know of Daniel Webster? 
Do you know the Bible by studying its books, its 
form, its structure? Studying Biblical criticism is 
not studying the Bible. Behind all form and struc- 
ture is the truth which makes the Bible. What is 
the Bible ? This thing that I hold in my hand ? Not 
at all. Were it in Greek, it would still be the Bible. 



266 



SIGNS OF PROMISE. 



Were it in Choctaw, it would still be the Bible. Not 
the book, — the truths that lie behind the book, they 
make the Bible. Such truths as these: the man is 
immortal — not that he is going to live a thousand or 
a hundred thousand years after death, but that he 
has in him a spirit that death cannot and does not 
touch; that he is under other laws than those that 
are physical, that he is under the great moral laws of 
right and wrong; that there is a God who knows 
thinks, feels, loves; and that there is a helping hand 
reached down out of heaven to lay hold of and to 
give help to every struggling man seeking, working, 
praying, wrestling toward a nobler manhood; an im- 
mortal spirit, a personal God, a forgiveness of sins: — 
that is the Bible. Not the two tables of stone on 
which the Ten Commandments were written — those 
have long since crumbled to the dust — but that eter- 
nal law, " Thou shalt not steal," that thunders out 
to-day against political corruption as it thundered out 
against iniquity in those days when it came from 
Mount Sinai, — that is the Bible. 

What is man ? Go ask the first chapter of Genesis, 
and it will tell you this: man is the lord and master 
and king of all physical creation; and in that decla- 
ration is the germ and seed of all future possible 
scientific development. That is the Bible. Who is 
God ? The human soul has made many eloquent at- 
tempts to answer that question. I have not forgotten 
the noble yet awful sovereignty with which Calvin 
would have invested that name, nor the more hope- 
ful inspiration with which Wesley would have in- 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 26/ 

vested it, nor the tenderer feelings which that word 
awakens in all those who have heard the portraiture 
and representation of God as it was given in years 
past from this platform. Yet I venture to say that 
nowhere in any literature, ancient or modern, Greek, 
Roman, Mediaeval, or American, will be found a por- 
traiture of God so resplendent, so catholic, so com- 
prehensive, as that which is photographed in the 103d 
Psalm. Go to the Bible, not for an infallible philos- 
ophy of human life, but for unveilings and disclosures 
of infinite, helpful, inspiring truth. 

IV. But behind this truth there is something 
further to be sought. For life is more than truth, 
and experience is more than philosophy. I have said 
before in this pulpit, I think, and I say it again, the 
Bible is the most human of books. It is the record 
of human life, and of the noblest and divinest ex- 
periences in human life. It is because it is a human 
book that it appeals to humanity. It is because it is 
a human book that humanity finds light and life and 
power in it. Writers of the Bible are not like lead 
pipes that take water from a distance and bring it a 
long way and deposit it for you, without the trouble 
of your drawing. Writers of the Bible are like the 
mountain-side, saturated with water which pours 
from its side in springs when we ask to drink. The 
Bible writers were saturated with divine truth; then 
out of that saturation the truth sprang forth into 
utterance. Abraham was not merely a voice that 
taught. There is one true God. Before he had ever 
uttered a word, the truth of God dwelling in human 



268 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

life was wrought into his own experience. Moses is 
not one who sets before us a system of sacrifices 
which we willingly let drop into the oblivion of the 
past: Moses is one into whose very heart was wrought 
the doctrine of self-sacrifice; who stood at the part- 
ing of the ways, with one road leading to princely 
estate, honor, wealth, and the other leading out into 
the wilderness, he knew not where; only this he 
knew, that burning sands invited heroic souls to 
traverse them, and darkness beckoned to faith to 
lead forth dependent souls through the darkness into 
light; and, turning his back on all that beckoned 
him to power, honor, glory, and accepting the call to 
service, he taught self-sacrifice by his life, before he 
put that teaching into liturgical and symbolic forms. 
David is not one unto whom God said, Write the doc- 
trine of forgiveness, as a scribe writes at the dictation 
of a master: David is one who, being placed on a 
pedestal of fame, plunged down into the awful hell of 
iniquity, smirched himself from head to foot with pol- 
lution; then, answering in his conscience to the word, 
Thou art the man, looked with loathing on himself 
and on that abominable past, and out of his anguish 
of soul wrote that Fifty-first Psalm, which is better 
than all other utterances to tell us what is repent- 
ance, and that Thirty-second Psalm to tell us what is 
the glory and the blessedness of being forgiven. 

In the Bible you come into association and fellow- 
ship with men who are living in the spiritual realm; 
you come in contact with men who are struggling, 
not for art, not for wealth, not for culture, not for re- 



IVIIAT IS THE BIBLE? 269 

finement, but for walking with God. They blunder; 
they do not know; they have dim visions, oftentimes, 
of God, — they see him as that blind man saw the 
trees as men walking. Their notion is intermingled 
with the notion of their time; but in it all, through- 
out it all, inspiring it all, is that hunger and thirst 
after righteousness that shall be filled. You know in 
olden time we used to think that the world was 
wrapped in impenetrable darkness until the moment 
when God said. Let there be light; then in an in- 
stant, as lightning flashes out of the heavens, light 
flashed out of the darkness and enwrapped the globe 
in its glory. We now know that it was not so; but 
when God said, " Light, be !" light came, not with an 
instant flash, but with gradual dawning, brooding the 
darkness and brooding the chaos, and bringing, 
through long centuries of conflict, a new-created 
world out of the womb of night. So in this Bible v^e 
see not an orb suddenly shining athwart the dark- 
ness of the night with dazzling brilliancy: we see the 
Sun of Righteousness rise upon darkened eyes; we see 
the truth wrestling with superstition; we see the spir- 
itual struggling with the sensual and the earthly; w^e 
see the light of the rising sun shining with its golden 
glory on the tops of the mountains; we see the head 
of an Isaiah or an Abraham or a David or a Paul or 
a Moses long before the night has fled from the val- 
leys below; we see night and day wrestling in a mor- 
tal combat, gradually the cohorts of darkness driven 
back, and at last the glory of the advancing day ris- 
ing victorious. 



270 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

Is the Bible less sacred and less valuable because 
we see in it how God has grown into human con- 
sciousness ? Infinitely more so ! Is Jesus less the 
Christ to you because he was cradled in a manger, 
and grew up to youth through all the weakness of 
babyhood and childhood, and grew in wisdom as well 
as in stature, and in favor with God and with man ? 

We are confronted in the present age with a spirit 
that calls itself Agnosticism, and which declares sub- 
stantially that we cannot know the infinite and the 
invisible, we cannot know God, we cannot know the 
future life, we cannot know the immortal, and per- 
haps — though on this agnostics are disagreed — we 
cannot know the eternal, invisible laws of right and 
wrong. It is either the spirit of indifference — I don't 
care to know these things, or it is the spirit of de- 
spair — I would know, but I cannot. When out of 
this chilling atmosphere of philosophic thought you 
come into the Bible, you come into the atmosphere 
of men who did know, because God was a part of 
their experience, because the immortal life was 
wrought into their own life and made a part 
of their being, because the glory of that invisible 
future shone upon their faces and into their lives. 
They were spiritual dogmatists. They believed that 
they knew whereof they spake. To come into the 
Bible is to come, not into words graven on stone, 
however true, but into living experiences of love, of 
faith, or hope, wrought in imperfect lives, but glori- 
fying them by the glory of an indwelling God. 

V. And behind the truth and behind the experi- 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 27 1 

ence you are to look for something still more than 
either, — you are to look for God himself. For it is 
the fundamental teaching of the Bible, that which 
underlies it all, that God dwells, not in the clouds 
above, nor in the sea beneath, nor in the earth we 
tread on, but in the hearts of men; that his voice is 
heard, not in the thunder of the heavens, not in the 
earthquake, not in the tornado, but in the still, small 
voice that ever calls to duty, to fidelity, and to love. 
Back of all Bible truth is the human experience of 
the Divine. Back of all human experience of the 
Divine is the God that inspires, irradiates, and cre- 
ates it. Do I value the locket less because I know it 
is a human handiwork ? It is not the locket I care 
for. It is the picture of the beloved that is in the 
locket. It is not the frame and form and structure 
of the book, but it is the God who dwells in the book 
that makes it dear to me, — dwelling in Moses, in 
David, in Isaiah, manifesting himself through their 
lives, in fragmentary ways, imperfect in conduct, im- 
perfect in experience, imperfect in expression; at last 
to show himself in Jesus Christ our Lord, the only 
perfect Life, the only perfect Teacher, the only per- 
fect manifestation of God, in either word or deed. 
He that did speak in fragmentary forms and utter- 
ances through the prophets hath spoken in these 
last days by his Son. Christ in the Bible makes 
the Bible sacred. 

Have your Bible, use your Bible, look beneath your 
Bible for the truth, look beneath the truth for the 
human experience — that is, truth vitalized and living; 



272 



SIGNS OF PROMISE, 



but beneath all truth, form, utterance, expression, ex- 
perience, look for God. He is its revelation. Hid- 
den in human hearts ? No ! not hidden. For in the 
Bible human hearts unfold themselves, and show 
the God disclosed there. The real power of all moral 
and spiritual teaching is the personality that hides 
behind and is seen through it. The preacher is not 
great by reason of the truth which he preaches; he 
is in some true measure himself the truth, and is a 
true preacher only as he gives to his congregation, 
not what he has gathered from printed pages, but 
himself, his own deepest and best life. And the 
glory of this book is this : that those who speak 
through it and write in it, whether in historical 
forms, philosophic forms, ethical forms, legal forms, 
or poetic forms, pour out their heart-experience; and 
the secret of their heart-experience is this: God in 
us, the hope of glory. 

Kaulbach's famous cartoon of the Reformation 
presents Luther holding aloft an open Bible, while 
grouped around and before him are the inventors, 
the discoverers, the thinkers, the writers of genius, 
that were nurtured in the cradle of the Reformation. 
It is a true picture. Where that open Bible has not 
gone, there to-day is darkness illimitable. Where 
that Bible has gone, partly opened and partly closed, 
there is a dawning of the day. And where it is an 
open Bible with a free page and a well-read one, 
there is the illumination of civilization. We hear 
much praise of the light of the nineteenth century. 
Is there no nineteenth century in China ? Is there 



WHAT IS THE BIBLE? 273 

no nineteenth century in Turkey ? Is there no nine- 
teenth century in India? in Siberia? in Russia? 
Hang the map of the world there before you, and 
look at it. All China dark, all India dark, all Africa 
black with darkness; gray lines on Russia where 
there is a half-open Bible, gray lines in Spain and 
Italy where there is a half-open Bible; and the tints 
growing lighter and brighter as the pages of the Bible 
become more and more open, until at last you reach 
Germany and England and America, where the hands 
hold aloft the open Bible: and there, and there only, 
is there the light of our boasted nineteenth century 
— the light that streams, not from the book, not from 
the lid or cover or printed page or any such thing, 
but the light that streams from the living Christ. 

For the book is the manger. And we worship not 
the manger; the Christ that is in the manger makes it 
sacred: and Him alone we worship. 



XVII. 
THE SPIRITUAL NATURE. 

" I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved 
blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." — i Thessalo- 
nians v. 23. 

What Paul prayed for his friends we may well 
pray for both ourselves and our friends — a blameless 
spirit, a blameless soul, a blameless body. This is 
the whole man. 

What we mean by the body we very well under- 
stand. Mystery even in the body there is, it is true; 
but still, on the whole, what is meant by a blameless 
body requires no great exposition. The man with a 
perfect physique, the man who is a picture of perfect 
health, verifies himself to our senses, v/ith his broad 
shoulders, his brawny, muscular limbs, the glow of 
health upon the cheek, his unwearied vigor by day, 
his sweet, undisturbed sleep at night. More difficult 
it is, perhaps, to define the soul, and comprehend 
fully what we mean by it; and yet measurably we 
may reach a definite and not difficult definition. 
We look in the Greek, to find the same word indis- 
criminately rendered ^Mife" and "soul.'' We look 
in the Latin, and find the word that stands for soul 



Plymouth Church, Sunday morning, February 3, 1889. 

274 



THE SPIRITUAL NATURE, 2/5 

to be " ^;^/;w^/' that which animates the body. The 
soul, then, is that which gives life to this physical 
organization. The brain is but ashes, without intel- 
lect behind it. The heart is a mere muscular valve, 
if there be no affection and love which make it beat 
quicker in the presence of the loved one. We may 
look to popular language for our interpretation of 
soul, as when we speak of a man as being a whole- 
souled fellow, and yet add that he is no one's enemy 
but his own, in the same sentence, indicating thus 
that a whole-souled fellow is very far from a blame- 
less or a perfect man. That which gives physical 
organism its use, that which makes it an instrument, 
that which links man to his fellow-man, that which 
deals with the transient and the visible, with that 
which is round about us, what philosophers classify 
as " the intellect, the sensibilities, and the will,'' — we 
call this the soul. It is, after all, akin to the animal, 
higher, much higher, and yet possibly evolved out 
of it, and certainly closely related to it. Men reason 
in a higher realm than the animal; but we no longer 
think that animals never reason. Our affections 
have a wider and a larger range; but no man who 
ever owned a good collie dog doubts that dogs love. 
The soul, then, is the life of the body. It is that 
which man in some true sense possesses in common 
with the animals, though superior by education, 
superior by evolution and development, superior by 
origin and nature if you will, yet at least cousin- 
german to the animal. 

But what is the spirit? We know the body. Wc 



276 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

measurably know the soul. But what is the spirit? 
Psychology has hardly answered this question. Even 
mental science has put the spiritual almost one side. 
But the Bible places tremendous emphasis upon it. 
It is by the spirit that we discern the truth. It is 
the spirit which is ever against the flesh, antagoniz- 
ing, striving for full mastery of it. It is the spirit 
which links us to God. It is the spirit which is the 
divine and immortal principle in man, undying. So 
that if there be no spirit, or it be left to die, there is 
no immortal life. 

If we look out into life, we shall certainly see that 
in the bodily relations man is an animal — simply a 
higher form of vertebrate mammalia; and if we look 
in the social life, we shall see again kinship between 
the animal and the man. Man is industrious; is he 
more industrious than the bee? Man is acquisitive: 
is he more acquisitive than the ant? Man is social: 
is he more gregarious than the cattle upon the field ? 
These qualities link him with the larger range of 
creation. 

But are there none that do not ? There is in man 
an independent power of recognition of right and 
wrong, not the product of instruction, though subject 
to education; not dependent upon approbativeness, 
though stimulated by approbation ; there is in man 
a Conscience, that makes cowards of us all when we 
do wrong. The power that is behind the policeman's 
truncheon is the power of conscience ; the reason 
why, in a time of threatening, an army of thirteen 
hundred policemen is able to keep fifteen thousand 



■I 



m 



THE SPIRITUAL NATURE, 2// 

criminals in order is not merely because the one is 
organized and the other is disorganized, but because 
in every army of policemen there is the power of a 
conscience fighting for them, and in every mob the 
power of conscience fighting against them. There 
is Reverence in man, and not merely for the visible 
and the successful. It builds cathedrals, gathers 
men in all varied communions, now to worship before 
the altar with the swinging censer, now to worship 
in Quaker meeting-house with no physical utterance, 
no expression save that silent outpour which comes 
up from the unuttering soul. Do the bears of the 
forest worship ? Do the moles make laws interpret- 
ing conscience ? There is in man a Hope, that 
beckons him on and on, farther and yet farther. 
But though there be hope even in the animal, he has 
no hope that leads more than a little way, while 
hope beckons ever to the human race, setting before 
man higher and yet still higher peaks to climb. It 
is idle to preach content to men. In all ages of the 
world, priests and philosophers and preachers and 
prophets have undertaken to do it, — in vain. God 
has put into the human soul a restless and invincible 
spirit of discontent. Preach content to your cow 
that chews the cud by the flowing stream. Preach 
content to your horse which has no better hope than 
the munching of his food when his journey is over. 
Preach content to your dog lying down by the fire- 
side when the hunt is done, or to the purring cat 
that lies in your lap. But preach not content to 
man, so long as a hope of God, of immortality, an 



2/8 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

unvisited heaven, and a great unrealized future 
beckon him on and on and on, and a voice still 
cries, " Come, come, come !" And Love — who, unless 
God has anointed his lips with the coal of eloquence 
off His own altar, who shall undertake to depict love 
in human hearts ? — love not sensuous, love not dealing 
with the visible, love not as seen in the parental in- 
stinct or any such thing, but love seeing beneath all 
visible signs an invisible spirit, love wishing for its 
loved one, not merely happiness, but virtue and 
character; love ! love ! able to bear all things, scorn- 
robes and smiting and thorn-crowns and crucifixion, 
for one it loves — aye ! and able to endure to see the 
loved one bear them, if out of crucifixion and out of 
thorns redemption may come forth ; love, that can 
even roll a stone to the door of the grave and stand 
there, weeping but not despairing, because love has 
seen in the loved an immortal power of life, and love 
knows that love cannot die ! 

Let us look for a few moments, and see what are 
some of the characteristics of this spiritual nature, 
what, some of the indications of the possession of 
this spiritual in man. How shall I know when I am 
spiritual ? How may you know when you are 
spiritual ? It is not difficult to tell whether you have 
a good body or no. It is not very difficult to tell 
what kind of a social and intellectual nature you 
possess. But how shall you know what is the value, 
worth, character, of your spiritual nature? 

In the first place, he that has a spiritual nature 
will have at least a hungering after the spiritual. 



THE SPIRITUAL NATURE, 2/9 

This may be, indeed, the only evidence of spiritual 
nature in him. It certainly is the first. Before as 
yet the artist knows how to paint or draw, he has in 
him the desire for painting ; and the little boy takes 
up his pencil and scrawls awa}^', trying to make 
forms, so bearing witness to a seed-art within him 
that needs development. Before as yet one has 
learned to interpret music or even to understand it 
he has within himself musical desires and yearnings; 
he plays melodies with a single finger, or childish 
harmonies with two or three. The bird has a wish 
for the air before its wings are fledged and it can 
soar out from the nest. Our hungers indicate what 
we are. Our desires are themselves "seeds and sug- 
gestions of our future possibility. As in the acorn 
there is in miniature the perfect oak infolded, that 
when the acorn is planted struggles toward light and 
its full-completed growth, so in every soul we could 
see, if we could find some knife skillful enough and 
some microscope discerning enough, the possibilities 
of the future life as they are infolded in that 
soul's desires. What do you wish for ? Wealth ? 
Pleasure? Influence? Power? Reputation? What 
do you wish for? A stronger conscience? A di- 
viner reverence ? A clearer vision of the invisible? 
A greater joy in prayer ? A greater fellowship with 
all the men and women that are marching forward 
through the world's history? A God that shall be 
more than a name, a dream, a form, a vision ? A 
God that shall be a reality ? These wishes are them- 
selves the hints and suggestions to you of wliat there 



28o 



SIGNS OF PROMISE. 



is within you that may be unfolded and revealed. 
Open your Bible and read there the outcries of souls 
whose outcries are of themselves the witness of a 
spiritual nature: " I follow hard after thee, my God.** 
" As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so 
panteth my soul after thee, O God.'* " O, wretched 
man that I am ! who shall deliver me from this body 
of death ?" These are the desires that form the 
spiritual experience in their earliest stages. 

And as the Bible expresses and interprets the de- 
sire of spirituality, so it gives its promise to those 
desires. You may wish for wealth, and stay poor. 
You may wish for reputation, and be dishonored. 
You may wish for knowledge, and yet be shut up to 
a life of relative ignorance. You may wish for in- 
fluence, and yet be so hedged about that all your life 
shall seem to be spent in vain. But the soul that 
longs for a stronger conscience, a clearer faith, a 
more eager and joyous hope, a diviner reverence, 
shall not go unsatisfied. This is the one hunger to 
which God promises ever and always enough: "Blessed 
are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, 
for they shall be filled.** 

He that has in him in any wise the elements of a 
spiritual nature has in him something that perceives 
the spiritual. When he sees it, he recognizes it. 
There may be a power to perceive and no power to 
produce, but always the power to perceive goes along 
with the nature, even if the nature be but germinant. 
Spirituality belongs not to this creed or that creed. 
It belongs not to this church or that church. What 



THE SPIRITUAL NATURE, 28 1 

liberal will deny that there was a true spiritual life 
in Jonathan Edwards fighting a battle for truth and 
purity in Northampton, then going away from his 
church to carry the Gospel to the Indian ? What 
man so orthodox that he will deny true spiritual 
life to Channing? What Protestant so Protestant 
that he will say there was no spiritual life in Madame 
Guyon or in Fenelon or in Thomas a Kempis ? 
Nay, what Christian so narrow in his Christianity 
that he will say there was no spirituality in Socrates, 
in Siddhartha, in Marcus Aureiius ? Wherever in the 
world, wherever in any church or in any creed, men 
have had the power to perceive this invisible world, 
to appreciate this divine life of reverence, love, faith, 
and hope, in their very vision of it they have shown 
some elements of it. It is not what a man thinks 
about the Bible that shows whether he is spiritual or 
not, but whether in the Bible he discerns a note that 
stirs his own heart to revere, to love, to hope. 

Who is this Jesus ? The son of a carpenter, whose 
father we know, and whose mother we know. Who 
was this Jesus ? A demagogue misleading the peo- 
ple, whom the Roman procurator crucified. Who 
was this Jesus ? A man of sorrows and acquainted 
with grief, whom, as he is led up to Calvary, we w^ill 
follow, wailing and weeping because of the pity 
which we have for him. Who is this Jesus ? A 
prophet, a miracle-worker (God must have been with 
him or he could not have done those miracles he 
wrought) — Elijah raised from the dead, perhaps. 
Who is this Jesus ? The Son of the living God. In 



282 



SIGNS OF PROMISE. 



him and through him God himself speaks to human 
consciousness. In him and through him the hand of 
God is reached down to help the wayward and the 
wandering. What made the difference in these vari- 
ous answers that men gave as that question was ad- 
dressed to them while Christ was still upon the 
planet? What made the difference between the re- 
viling of the mob and the reverence of the disciples? 
Learning ? The disciples were not learned men. 
This: that underneath, in their own hearts, there was 
a stirring of reverence, of love, of hope, of divinity, 
that answered to the divinity which they saw without. 
What is the world ? A playground. Let us dance 
and laugh and play and have a good time. We will 
be like the midgets in the sunbeam; presently the 
rain will beat down upon us and we shall be washed 
out. What is the world ? A workshop. We must 
toil and drudge, and drudge and toil, our day of ten 
or twelve hours; then night will soothe us with her 
sleep. What is the world ? A schoolroom, in which the 
heavenly Father is teaching all his children, through 
laughter and through tears, through toils and through 
holidays, through inspirations given by himself and 
inspirations that are got from a hundred helpful hands 
and hearts around about. And death is but the call- 
ing home, when school-life is over and real life be- 
gins. Why is it that to some of you here to-day 
life is only a summer's holiday, and to others of you 
here life is only an hour of drudgery and toil, and to 
others life is a magnificent march through God's 
schoolroom to God's eternal habitation ? Not that 



4 



THE SPIRITUAL NATURE. 283 

some are wiser than others, have studied life more 
thoroughly, are more rational, but that somehow in 
some there is a power of reverence, a power of con- 
science, a power of faith, a power of love and hope, 
that sees behind creation what the Creator hides 
from others* eyes, and reads in the hieroglyphics of 
life what to others are meaningless symbols on a 
dead, dead stone. 

Spirituality, too, finds vent, finds a way to express 
itself; and whenever this spiritual nature which I am 
trying to open out before you attains any power of 
expression at all, it expresses spiritual truth. Not — 
and I beg your close attention for a moment — not 
truth about the spiritual realm, but spiritual truth 
itself. It does not require that one be an artist to 
criticise a picture. John Ruskin has no fame as an 
artist, but he is famous as an art-critic. Who is the 
true musician in this congregation ? Show me one 
who, when we are singing some good hymn that 
lifts us above the earth, is cool and critical, looking 
on and telling himself that this was sung a little out 
of time, and that a little out of expression, and I will 
show you a critic, not a musician. And show me one 
who, lifted up on the broad wings of song as it finds 
its expression in this great congregation, is borne by 
the hymn, "Jesus, lover of my soul," into the very 
bosom of Christ, or by that other hymn, " Love Di- 
vine, all love excelling," has in his own soul a love 
started that shall go singing with him through all the 
week, and I will show you the true musician ; for the 
musician is not one that can talk about the laws of 



284 SIGNS OF PROMISE, 

music, but one that is thrilled by it. And the spirit- 
ual man is not the man that can talk glibly or wisely 
about the laws of the spiritual life, but the one who 
utters and expresses by word or deed that spiritual 
life itself. 

A week or two ago I said in the columns of The 
Christian Union that Matthew Arnold, as a prose 
writer, was lamentably deficient in spiritual insight; 
and I received a letter from a complaining critic, who 
said, " Who has, indeed, written more beautifully 
about the laws of the spiritual realm than Matthew 
Arnold?" Perhaps no one. But to write about the 
laws of the spiritual realm no more shows a man to 
be spiritual than I am shown to be an athlete because 
I have somewhere in the cold remains of my note- 
book the skeleton of a sermon on the care of the 
body. Look in literature for those that have given 
expression to spiritual life, and you will find the 
men who have possessed spiritual life. In Paul, not 
when he is writing the fifth and sixth chapters of 
Romans, but when he is writing the seventh and 
eighth chapters of Romans — then is spiritual life 
ebullient and coming to the front. Not Calvin, with 
his Institutes of Religion, but Thomas a Kempis, with 
his reverence, humility, and love. Go into the 
prayer-meeting. The minister w^ill rise and talk to 
you never so wisely about the Scriptures, or about 
the laws of conscience, or about the laws of the spir- 
itual life, and no eye shall be bedewed with tears, 
and no heart shall be quickened in its pulse. He 
will take his seat, and some one man will rise, not 



THE SPIRITUAL NATURE. 285 

learned nor eloquent, as schoolmen define eloquence; 
but, schooled in the school of suffering, he has been 
taught to look up and to look in, and out of that 
looking up and in he has found lessons; in that look- 
ing up and in he has seen visions; he speaks of that 
which he does know, and he gives utterance to that 
which he has felt; and when he stops, there is the 
long-drawn sigh of the congregation that bears wit- 
ness how he brought them into a realm they knew 
not of before. The spiritual prayer-meeting is not a 
prayer-meeting that is interesting or entertaining, but 
the prayer-meeting that has in it the pulses of a spir- 
itual life. 

We are not all teachers, but we all live; and, after 
all, the true measure and final test of spiritual life is 
not what we think, nor what we say, but the way in 
which we live. I pray God that you present your- 
selves, spirit, soul, body, blameless before the throne 
of his grace. Blameless in body, with no wart upon 
it of intemperance or sensual self-indulgence; blame- 
less in soul, with no ignorant superstition degrad- 
ing it, with no social coldness, no disfellowship of 
humanity, no idleness shackling the hands that should 
have been busy in service; blameless in spirit, — what 
do I mean by that ? I pray God that you may have 
a reverence that shall always show something higher 
and grander and nobler and diviner than the eye has 
ever shown you, and shall always make you bow be- 
fore it and follow after it. I pray that God may give 
you a hope that shall summon you to a nobler and 
diviner life than can be interpreted by anything the 



% 



286 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

eye has ever seen or the ear has ever heard. I pray 
God that he may give you a conscience that shall 
hold you rigorously and undeviatingly in the path 
of rectitude, not turning to the right hand nor the 
left under beckoning enticement or under threaten- 
ing pressure and menace. I pray God that he may 
give you a love so large, so catholic, and so in- 
spired by him that no wrong shall weary its pa- 
tience, no iniquity shall blur or hinder its sym- 
pathy, no sorrow shall fail to touch its pity : for this 
makes manhood and womanhood. Not what we 
know : ignorance does not defile us. Not what we 
have done : doing does not make us. But what in 
the higher developments of our soul, what in our rev- 
erence, in our hope, in our faith, in our love, we are^ — 
that really makes us. 

Your house may be a stone palace such as the 
Doges of Venice lived in, or it may be a tent set up 
to-night to be taken down to-morrow. And the in- 
terior may be spread with all rich hangings from the 
East, magnificent in equipment ; or the walls may be 
barren and the floor be sanded. But if in the house, 
whether rich or poor, well-equipped or ill-equipped, 
there is dwelling a tenant whose spirit is ever look- 
ing upward, ever beckoned forward, ever reaching 
outward, revering, loving, hoping, — it is a Prince that 
dwells there, whether he dwell in palace, in hovel, or 
in tent. 



XVIII. 
DOES GOD'S MERCY ENDURE FOREVER? 

** The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plente- 
ous in mercy. He will not always chide : neither will he keep his 
anger forever. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to 
everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto 
children's children." — Psalm ciii. 8, 9 and 17. 

Sixteen different times does the Bible declare in 
explicit terms that God's mercy endures forever, be- 
sides devoting one entire Psalm to the reiterated 
statement of this truth and its historical illustration. 
It may seem strange that I should venture even so 
much as to ask concerning it, as a question. 

And yet an entire theological system has been 
built upon a practical denial that God's mercy does 
endure forever. At least, a practical denial of the 
eternal and intrinsic nature of God's mercy under- 
lies a great deal of theological teaching, and is 
wrought into, if it is not the foundation of, a preva- 
lent theological system. Let me briefly describe it. 

That system regards God as the moral governor 
of the universe, which he governs by law, enforced 
by penalty. Justice is the inherent and essential 
quality of a true government ; it is therefore the in- 

Plymouth Church, Sunday evening, December 11, 1SS7. 

287 



288 



SIGNS OF PROMISE. 



herent and essential quality of a true governor. But 
this justice demands terrible penalty for sin, because 
sin is flagrant in its character and terrible in its con- 
sequences. This penalty is so terrible that mercy 
interferes. It cannot bear to see the penalty in- 
flicted. It pleads with justice. It stays the hand of 
justice. It entreats delay. It offers an opportunity 
for repentance. This stay is brought about by a 
compromise between justice and mercy. The result 
of this compromise is a plan of salvation. Under 
this plan of salvation mercy is effectual, but effectual 
only with limitations. The great and fundamental 
fact is justice ; the qualifying and limiting fact is 
mercy. The principle has been stated by a promi- 
nent theologian in the saying, ^* God must be just : he 
7nay be merciful.'* Mercy is thus limited as to the 
number over whom it is effectual. In the belief of 
the Jew, mercy was effectual only for the Jews ; in 
the belief of the Roman Catholic, only for the bap- 
tized ; in the belief of the Calvinist, only for the elect; 
and to-day it is hardly too much to say that in the 
great body of Christian churches it is believed to be 
effectual only within the limits and range of Chris- 
tendom. It is limited also as to time. Physical death 
brings the epoch or reign of mercy to an end. After 
that, mercy implores no more ; justice has its inex- 
orable way. 

Sometimes this plan or scheme is so presented as to 
offend our moral sense. The penalty depicted tran- 
scends all idea even of justice. It becomes a horrible 
revenge. But apart from all such mediaeval exagger- 



DOES GOD'S MERCY ENDURE FOREVER? 289 

ations, grotesque caricatures on justice which have 
come down to us from a time when the Inquisition, 
the rack, and the fagot were the implements of pun- 
ishment and the symbols of law and government, — 
apart from these relics of a false conception even of 
justice itself, the fundamental thought that God is a 
moral governor, that the end of his government is 
the administration of justice, and that mercy is sim- 
ply a temporary and limited interposition, embrac- 
ing, at best, only a few of the human race, and oper- 
ating, at best, only for a little section of eternity, — 
this idea is not only wrought into the theological 
systems of the past, but underlies not a little of the 
preaching of the present. This system has been 
beautifully expressed by Longfellow, in " The Golden 
Legend." A miracle-play is introduced into that 
drama, and in this miracle-play the mediaeval con- 
ception of the plan of salvation is represented by a 
conversation between God, Justice, Mercy, the Four 
Virtues and the Divine Son. Let me read this repre- 
sentation to you : 

Mercy, (At the feet of God.) 
Have pity, Lord, be not afraid 
To save mankind, whom thou hast made. 
Nor let the souls that were betrayed 
Perish eternally ! 

Justice, 
It cannot be, it must not be ! 
When in the garden placed by thee. 
The fruit of the forbidden tree 
He ate, and he must die ! 



290 SIGNS OF PROMISE. 

Mercy, 
Have pity, Lord, let penitence 
Atone for disobedience. 
Nor let the fruit of man's offense 
Be endless misery! 

Justice, 
What penitence proportionate 
Can e'er be felt for sin so great ? 
Of the forbidden fruit he ate. 

And damned must he be ! 

God, 
He shall be saved, if that within 
The bounds of earth one free from sin 
Be found, who for his kith and kin 
Will suffer martyrdom. 

The Four Virtues, 
Lord, we have searched the whole around 
From center to the utmost bound, 
But no such mortal can be found ; 
Despairing, back we come. 

Wisdom, 
No mortal, but a God made man. 
Can ever carry out this plan, 
Achieving what none other can, 
Salvation unto all ! 

God, 
Go, then, O my beloved Son ! 
It can by thee alone be done ; 
By thee the victory shall be won 
O'er Satan and the Fall ! 



% 



DOES GOD'S MERCY ENDURE FOREVER? 2gi 

More graphically, if more fearfully, the same concep- 
tion is represented by Jonathan Edwards in his 
memorable sermon on " Sinners in the hands of an 
Angry God." 

** The God," says Edwards, " that holds you over the pit 
of hell much as one holds a spider or some loathsome in- 
sect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; 
his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you 
as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire ; he is 
of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight ; you are 
ten thousand times as abominable in his eyes as the most 
hateful and venomous serpent is in ours. You have of- 
fended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did 
his prince ; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds 
you from falling into the fire every moment ; it is ascribed 
to nothing else that you did not go to hell the last night ; 
that you were suffered to awake again in this world after you 
closed your eyes to sleep ; and there is no other reason to 
be given why you have not dropped into hell since you 
arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up; 
there is no other reason to be given why you have not gone 
to hell since you have sat here in the house of God, provok- 
ing his pure eyes by your sinful, wicked manner of attend- 
ing his solemn worship. Yea ; there is nothing else that is 
to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment 
drop into hell.** 

Thus justice is supposed to be an eternal flame, 
waiting to devour the sinner, and mercy a thread 
liable to snap at any moment, which holds him sus- 
pended over the wrath to come. 

Men no longer represent the thread as quite so fine- 
spun; they no longer represent the flames of wrath as 



292 S/GXS OF PROMISE. 

quite so hot ; they no longer present the truth with 
the same vividness of imagination or the same 
strength of conviction. But, modified and amelio- 
rated, to suit the temper of our own times, the same 
conceptions of God as a moral governor, and justice 
as the end of his government, and mercy as a tem- 
porary and limited interposition, still remain. 

Now I believe this whole conception to be radi- 
cally false and unscriptural. The Bible does not 
represent God as a moral governor, nor justice as the 
end of his government, nor mercy as a temporary in- 
terposition pleading for delay. It does not repre- 
sent that God must be just and may be merciful. On 
the contrary, it represents God as a Father, mercy 
as the end of his administration, and justice as the 
instrument which mercy uses for the accomplish- 
ment of its ends. Let us look at these propositions 
separately. 

I. God is a Father, not a moral governor. He is 
the Teacher and Trainer of the race. He is the 
shepherd who guides his flock and tenderly carries 
the lambs in his bosom. He is the Vinedresser who, 
finding the vine entangled among the weeds and lying 
on the ground, lifts it up, provides it with a trellis, 
turns its leaves and its branches toward the sun, 
prepares it for its blossom and its fruit. He is a 
Father, the end of whose administration in the 
household is not justice, but redemption ; who does 
all things that he may bring manhood out of boy- 
hood, virtue out of vice, strength out of weakness. 

" Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord 



DOES GOD'S MERCY ENDURE FOREVER? 293 

pitieth them that fear him." Is he not King also, 
King of kings and Lord of lords ? Yes, he is. Yet 
what is this but saying that Love is King, Mercy is 
King ; the hand that holds the scepter, that rules 
the world, is a Father's hand. The crown of his 
coronation is the crown of love. 

2. The whole of his administration, therefore, is 
keyed to mercy, to redemption, not to law and 
penalty. The human race are children to be de- 
veloped, not ticket-of-leave men to be watched and 
caught if they go wrong. Life is a school, humanity 
is in its tutelage, and God is the Teacher. God 
rocks the cradle in which the infant race is resting; 
he is the nurse. His kindnesses are loving kind- 
nesses, and his mercies are tender, that, is tending, 
mercies. The whole end of his government is not to 
administer justice and inflict penalty, but to admin- 
ister mercy and work out redemption. 

3. Thus the whole experience of life, its pain, its 
discipline, its otherwise inexplicable sorrows, are the 
operations of mercy. Their end is not punitive, but 
redemptive. The very hardnesses of life, the very 
apparent cruelties of life, are the kindnesses of a 
God who through severity and gentleness is working 
out the world's redemption. 

Go to Hampton Institute, that wonderful school 
which General Armstrong has founded, and where he 
is educating five or six hundred Negro and Indian 
children. These Negroes rise at half-past five or six 
in the morning ; they are kept continually at toil of 
one description or another until half-past nine at 



294 



SIGNS OF PROMISE. 



night. They are under military discipline. They 
are now in the workshop and now in the school-room. 
They are drilled, and every offense is marked, and 
every violation of law is punished. Ask General 
Armstrong why the rules of Hampton Institute are 
so rigid, why the toil is so continuous, why the 
burden of industry so seemingly unalleviated. And 
he will tell you that this is just the discipline the 
Negro race needs to fit it for manhood ; that it has 
been so long tended and cared for, that it has so long 
been kept from the hard experience of independence, 
that it requires more of hardness, more of toil, than 
the white race. The discipline is not for punish- 
ment ; it is for development, and out of it there 
grow nobility of nature and nobility of service ; and 
from all through the Southern States there come 
back to Hampton songs of thankfulness and grati- 
tude to him who was so merciful that he had the 
courage, when necessary, to be rigorous and severe. 

So God puts us, his children, into life, binds heavy 
burdens on our backs, gives us hard tasks, allows us 
to know the experiences of pain and of heartache : for 
thus he makes us strong. He brings us into the 
circle and bids us wrestle with an opponent who 
sometimes throws us and whom it is hard for us to 
throw, but in the wrestling our muscles grow strong 
and our nerves tense and our courage high, and out 
of the battle comes forth the hero. But the end of 
it all is not law, nor justice, nor punishment, but 
mercy, redemption, education. 

4. Thus, in this view of life, anger and penalty. 



DOES GOD'S MERCY ENDURE FOREVER? 295 

wrath and punishment are seen but to be the instru- 
ments of love. The penology of the universe is re- 
demptive, as we are beginning to make the penology 
even of earth redemptive. Formerly, in the punish- 
ments of society, the problem was how to inflict the 
severest penalties on the wrongdoer. The record of 
the punishments which man has inflicted on his 
fellow-man in the name of justice is a horrible record. 
The groans and tears which have been extorted by a 
merciless justice are, I was going to say, like echoes 
from the bottomless pit ; but I should speak more 
truly if I said, the distant sounds which our imagina- 
tion hears from the bottomless pit are in reality the 
echoes of our own cruelty to our fellow-man. I could 
easily harrow up your feelings by describing the tor- 
tures of the rack, of the knout, of the bastinado, — all 
administered in the name of justice, all as penalties 
for wrong-doing. We have passed beyond this 
epoch of vengeance. We have come into a brighter 
and better and more humane conception of justice 
and penalty. We try, at least, to adjust penalty to 
the sin, to make it properly and truly retributive. 
We give Justice back her scales, of which cruelty had 
robbed her, and bid her hold them until they reach 
an even balance. This is now the rule and law of 
our judicial and our punitive system. But we are 
passing on from this gradually to a still higher con- 
ception of punishment. Prison-reformers are not 
content merely with a judicial system which shall be 
just. They are working to bring out in society a 



296 



SIGNS OF PROMISE. 



judicial system which shall be redemptive. What is 
the difference ? *Let me illustrate. 

A criminal is arrested, tried, convicted, for forgery. 
He is sentenced to Sing Sing, to hard labor for a 
given number of years. The judge, in determining 
how many years he shall remain at Sing Sing, con- 
siders what is the enormity of the offense, what the 
mitigating circumstances ; and endeavors to adjust 
the penalty to the criminality of the deed that is 
past. Another criminal is sentenced to the Elmira 
Reformatory. He receives what is known as the 
" indeterminate sentence.** He goes there, not for a 
specified time, but to remain until he is cured. He 
is taken by Mr. Brockaway, examined as to his past 
life, his past associations, his heredity ; and judg- 
ment is formed as to his character and the possibili- 
ties of his future. He is put into the evening school 
and into the day workshop, and his work is adjusted, 
not with reference to getting the most money out of 
him now, but the most manhood for the future. His 
conduct is watched, a record is kept of it, he is pro- 
moted if he does well, he is degraded if he does ill ; 
and when the authorities are satisfied that he has 
learned how to earn an honest livelihood by in- 
telligent industry, and that his will and purpose is 
firmly set to so earn his living, a place is found in 
society where that living may be earned, and he is 
put into it. Thus the whole end of the Elmira Re- 
formatory is redemption, not punishment. The term 
of the criminal service is adjusted, not with reference 
to the offense that is past, but with reference to the 



DOES GOD'S MERCY ENDURE FOREVER? 297 

life that lies in the future. This is the modern con- 
ception even of justice. Thus society itself is be- 
ginning to make even its wrath tributary to mercy. 
So in the divine administration, only with no blun- 
derings and blindness such as characterize all human 
endeavor, the Infinite Love takes all criminal na- 
tures and works upon them, that it may work in 
them a true and divine manhood. There is no w^ath 
but the wrath of love. There is no justice but the 
justice that works out the ends of mercy. God's 
mercy endures forever, because it is the nature of 
God and of God's government and of God's punish- 
ments to achieve cure, healing, health, for humanity. 
And he who has learned the lesson, from whom the 
sinful passion has been eradicated, who has come 
into a divine manhood, is discharged from all penalty 
and wrath, — discharged, not into the liberty of an in- 
dividual and separate existence, but into the bosom 
and heart and love of the Eternal Father. 

5. Thus mercy, cure, healing, is the end of the 
divine government. The heart of God himself is 
the spring and source from which all beneficent and 
healing influences flow. God's mercy endures for- 
ever, because God is Love. The spring and source 
of his mercy is not in something outside himself. It 
is in his own nature. His mercy, therefore, includes 
all men, Jew and Gentile, elect and non-elect, bap- 
tized and unbaptized. Pagan and Christian. It in- 
cludes all epochs and all time, and runs throughout 
all eternity. It is eternal and infinite. It cannot be 
exhausted. It is the nature of God to be remedial. 



298 



SIGNS OF PROMISE, 



When he ceased to be merciful, he would cease to be 
God. Let the sun forget to shine, and still call the 
blackened orb a sun ; let the mother-heart forget to 
love, and call the bloodless vessel still a heart : but do 
not conceive that God should cease to feel pity for 
his sorrowing children and mercy for his fallen chil- 
dren, and still be God. 

6. Does it then follow that all men will be cured, 
all souls healed, all humanity brought to God and 
the divine life at last ? I wish I could think so, but 
I cannot. The most awful truth of life, to me, is the 
truth of liberty, the truth of individual responsi- 
bility, the truth that every man is, in a true sense, 
the final arbiter of his own destiny. What God can 
do I know not, but if I read aright either the word 
which he has written in the Book, or the word which 
he is writing in life, God will not interfere with the 
liberty of the human will. He will influence, he will 
entreat, he will teach, he will guide, he will persuade, 
but he will not coerce. The only service he will take 
is the service of willing children, voluntarily offered. 
The service of the galley-slave, chained to the oar, 
he will have none of. You can, if you will, shut out 
the Almighty love and mercy of God from your 
heart. You can close the shutters, draw down the 
curtains and exclude the sunlight. It will still shine 
on, but not for you. God's mercy endures forever, 
but whether God's mercy will accomplish your cure, 
redeem you, bring you to the knowledge and the 
love of himself, that must depend at last upon 
whether you will accept or whether you will reject it. 



DOES GOD'S MERCY ENDURE FOREVER? 299 

And for him that finally rejects, for him whom the 
love of God entreats in vain, for him whom the sun- 
shine of God*s love irradiates in vain, I see no hope ; 
I see naught but death. I can find no words that 
better express the awful conviction, from which I 
cannot escape, than the words in which the pastor 
of Plymouth Church uttered his conviction many 
years ago. That conviction I do not believe he ever 
changed. This declaration of his conviction he cer- 
tainly never retracted.* Let me read it : 

" But for all those who have been clearly taught, who 
have been moved by their wicked passions deliberately to 
set aside Him of whom the prophets spake, whom the apos- 
tles more clearly taught, whom the Holy Spirit, by the 
divine power, now makes known to the world through the 
gospel, — for them, if they reject their Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin. If 



* In his later years Mr. Beecher did distinctly repudiate the doc- 
trine of endless conscious sin and suffering, as limiting both the 
divine power and the divine goodness, but he never adopted the 
hypothesis of universal restoration to holiness and happiness. His 
view is perhaps nowhere better expressed so briefly as in the fol- 
lowing from his sermon on **The Growth of Creation " (Dec. 14, 
1884 ; p. 349 of the volume " Evolution and Religion*'): 

*'God is wise, God is great, God is love ; and time at last will 
bear record of his wisdom and power and love and universal vic- 
tory in the midst of chanting worlds and rejoicing saints. May 
you and I so develop the power and energy of love in ourselves 
that we shall be there, and not have fallen through and gone out as 
things worthless, the rubbish of creation, unrecognized, unexistcnt." 



300 



SIGA^S OF PROMISE. 



they deliberately neglect, set aside, or reject their Saviour, 
he will as deliberately in the end reject them. 

" Sometimes, in dark caves, men have gone to the edge of 
unspeaking precipices, and, wondering what was their depth, 
have cast down fragments of rock and listened for the re- 
port of their fall, that they might judge how deep that black- 
ness was ; and listening — still listening — no sound returns ; no 
sullen plash, no clinking stroke as of rock against rock — 
nothing but silence, utter silence ! And so I stand upon the 
precipice of life. I sound the depths of the other world 
with curious inquiries. But from it comes no echo and no 
answer to my questions. No analogies can grapple and 
bring up from the depths of the darkness of the lost world 
the probable truths. No philosophy has line and plum- 
met to sound the depths. There remain for us only the 
few authoritative and solemn words of God. These declare 
that the bliss of the righteous is everlasting ; and with equal 
directness and simplicity they declare that the doom of the 
wicked is everlasting." 

7. From this dark and fathomless abyss I turn my 
eyes to the glory of the future. The Christ that was 
crucified has yet to come, conquering and to con- 
quer. Love shall be victorious ; mercy shall achieve 
its end, and the victory w^hich redeeming love vj\\\ 
finally win shall be the victory, not of law, not of 
wrath and vanity, not of irresistible force, but of 
persuading, healing, redeeming love. When at last 
mercy has achieved its end, when they who have re- 
sisted its every influence unto death are silent in an 
eternal grave, from which there is no resurrection, 
then in the song which shall go up from the ten 
thousand times ten thousand, from every creature in 



II 



1*1 




DOES GOD'S MERCY ENDURE FOREVER? 3OI 

the heavens above and on the earth beneath and in 
the waters under the earth, there will be no discord- 
ant note, no spiritual dissonance, no sullen silence ; 
there will be no remote and far-off corner of the uni- 
verse where, behind locked doors, the groans of an 
endless misery and the wrath of an endless sin shall 
prove that the devil has won a victory in some small 
corner of God's dominions ; but God shall be all and 
in all, and life shall reign, and death shall be put 
forever under feet. 

When that hour comes, will your voice be hushed 
and silent in eternal death ? O, may it rather join 
in the new song, " Worthy is the Lamb that was 
slain, to receive glory, and honor, and power, and 
riches, for ever and ever!" 



Zhc Cbristian IHnlon. 



Editors- 5^^"^^^'^*^^^"' 

) Hamilton W. Mabie. 



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compositions. The make-up of the 

William Cullen Bryant. 
Family Library of Poetry and Song. Edited by 

W. C. Bryant. Memorial Edition. 2000 poems from 700 au- 
thors — English, Scottish, Irish and American, including transla- 
tions from ancient and modern languages; 600 poems and 200 au- 
thors not in former editions. Containing also Mr. Bryant's Intro- 
ductory Essay on Poetry, one of his most valued productions ; 
Biography of Mr. Bryant, by Gen. James Grant Wilson ; Com- 
plete indexes. Illustrated. Holiday, and Memorial Subscription 
Editions. Send for circular. 



** The most complete and satisfactory 
work of the kind ever issued." — New 
York Tribune. 

" Nothing has ever approached it in 
completeness. "-^V<?w York Eve'^^Mail. 

" It is highly fitting that Mr. Bryant, 



who presided over American poetry 
almost from its birth, should have left 
this collection as an evidence of his in- 
fluence in forming the American taste 
for what is pure and noble." — Cincin- 
nati Christian Standard, 



Helen Campbell. 



A Sylvan City. Philadelphia, Old and New. 

fusely Illustrated, $2 00. 



Pro- 



before been issued." — The Keystone^ 
Philadelphia. 



*' So beautiful and attractive a book 
upon the picturesque localities and 
characters of Philadelphia has never 

The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking. 

Cloth, $1.00. 

" By all odds the completest house- 1 price, it seems well calculated to sup^ 
hold ' Cook-book ' that has come under | ply the missing link in that line." — Chi- 
our notice." — Ne7v York Exami-ner. \cago Tribune. 

"Admirable in matter, cheap in | 

The Housekeeper's Year Book. Limp cloth, 50 cts. 

" Gives a sort of culinary almanac formation regarding" the day*s work; 

for the year, with various instructions and at the back a blank summary and 

for all seasons; pages for household ac- outline for ' household inventory/ 

counts, arranged week by week; para- * household hints,' etc. — Chicago Stan- 

g^aphs on marketing for the various dard. 
months; menus for the table; useful in- 



FORDS, HOWARD, df HULBERT. 



Martin Warren Cooke. 
The Human Mystery in Hamlet. An attempt to 



Say an Unsaid Word: with Suggestive Parallelisms from the 
Elder Poets. By the President of the N. Y. State Bar Association. 
i6mo. Vellum cloth, gilt top, $i.oo, 

spiration from Greek and Roman class- 
ics, while ' bettering their instruction.' 
He certainly makes out an excellent 
case, and has done it with remarkable 
clearness and attractive interest." 



" The author believes he has a theory 
that will account for all the facts, har- 
rnonize conflicting views as to Hamlet's 
'insanity' or 'feigned insanity,' and 
show that Shakespeare drew much in- 



(Mrs.) S. M. Henry Davis. 
Norway Nights and Russian Days. The Record 

of a Pleasant Summer Tour. With many Illustrations, Decor- 
ated cloth, $1.25; hf. calf, gilt top, uncut, $2.50. 
*' Simply and entirely delightful; 

fresh, breezy, picturesque, charmingly 

written. '^ — New York Commercial A d- 

vertiser. 



" In form it is a joy to the eye. so 
delicate are print and paper, with 
abundant illustrations and pretty bind- 
ing." — The Critic y New York. 



Sir Philip Sidney: His Life and Times. Steel 
plates: Portrait of Sidney; View of Penshurst Castle; fac-simile 
of Sidney's MS. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

"Worthy of place as an English 
classic." — Pittsburgh Commercial. 

" Compels the reader's attention, and 
leaves upon his mind impressions more 



distinct and lasting than the greatest 
historians are in the habit of making." 
— Christian Union^ New York. 



E. C. Gardner. 
The House that Jill Built, after Jack's had 

Proved a Failure. A book on Home Architecture. With Illus- 
trations and Plans, by the author. Cloth, $1.50. 



'' Includes .... whatever is really 
necessary in order to build an artistic 
and convenient house. . . . Rich in 
sound suggestions."— ^^j/^« Globe, 



" How the maximum of comfort and 
beauty can be secured with the mini- 
mum of expense.' —Chicago Tribune. 



Fanny Chambers Gooch. 
Face to Face with the Mexicans. The Domestic 

Life, Educational, Social and Business Ways, Statesmanship and 
Literature, Legendary and General History of the Mexican Peo- 
ple, as Seen and Studied by an American Woman During Seven 
Years of Familiar Intercourse with them. Large Svo., 5S4 pp. 
200 illustrations from original drawings and photographs. 

'* It is like living in Mexico to read 
this book. . . . Altopfether this is a 
fresh, piquant, instructive and reada- 
ble work. Many books take one to 
Mexico; this takes one into Mexico." — 
Literary World , Boston. 

*'A treasury of romance, legend, 



history, picturesque description, and 
fi^enial humor .... a remarkable var- 
iety of details .... of valuable infor- 
mation, alike interostiiif^ It) the trav^- 
eler and useful to the business com- 
munity." — M. RoMEKO, Mir.isttr /torn 
Mexico. 



MISCELLANEOUS PUBLICATIONS, 



John George Hezekiel. 
Bismarck : His Authentic Biography. Including 

many Private Letters and Memoranda. Historical Introduction 
by Bayard Taylor. Profusely Illustrated: New Map, etc. 
8vo. Cloth, $3 50; half mor., $4.00. 

*' If, as is alleged, ' history is biog- 1 the brains inserted, for the history of 
raphy with the brains knocked out,' | Bismarck is really the modern history 
this portly volume may be appropri- j of Germany and the key to that of 
ately called a chapter of history with \ modern Europe.'"— -Z^^/rt?// Post, 

Harriet Raymond Lloyd. 

Life and Letters of John H. Raymond. Organ- 
izer and First President of Vassar College. Edited by his eldest 
daughter. 8vo. Steel Portrait. Cloth, beveled, $2. 50. 



*' It is the creation of Vassar CoUge 
out of his own brain, the advance from 
theory to practice, the working out of 
the pathway for the higher education 
of women where none existed, that 
wise conservatism and intelligent pro- 
gress by which these results were 



reached, and the entire consecration 
of his life to these ends— which is Dr. 
Raymond's chief monument." — New 
York Ti77tes. 

'•A book, the charm of which it is 
not easy to express."— C4zVa^(? Ad- 
vance. 



Henry C. McCook, D.D. 

Tenants of an Old Farm: Leaves from the Note- 
Book of a Naturalist. By the Vice-Pres. Acad. Nat. Sciences, 
Philadelphia. Profusely Illustrated. 460 pages. Well indexed. 
Decorated cloth. Published at %2i^Q\ price reduced to $1.50. 
Excursions and investigations into the habits of moths, bees, hor- 
nets, ants, spiders, crickets, cidadas, and many varieties of insects. 



*' I have much pleasure in bearing 
testimony to the fidelity and skill which 
Dr. McCook has devoted to the study 
of these interesting atoms: and those 
who read his work may safely depend 
on the accuracy of what he says." — 
From Sir John Lubbock's Pre/ace to 
the Engtish Editiofi, 



*' The scientific accuracy, the good 
illustrations and simple descriptions 
make it a valuable book for amateurs 
and a good book of reference for ad- 
vanced sX.Mdi^nX.^.''''— Springfield Repub- 
lican. 

"Would make a charming present to 
one of scientific tastes." — Advance, 



Jacob Harris Patton, Ph.D. 

Concise History of the American People. Illus- 
trated with Portraits, Charts, Maps, etc. Marginal Dates, Census 
Tables, Statistical References, and full Indexes. 2 vols., 8vo, $5. 

'* We take great pleasure in com- 1 " Without doubt the best short his- 
mending it for all the purposes of a | tory of the United States that has ever 
complete and accurate histoiy." — New I been published. *'—7VacA^r*j/«f///«/<', 
York Observer. \ N. Y. 

The Democratic Party: Its Political History and 

Influence. i6mo, 350 pp. Cloth, $1.00. 

*' An instructive outline review of the whole political history of the United 
States."— A^^w York Times. 



FORDS, HOWARD, 6^ HULBERT. 



Robert R. Raymond. 
Shakespeare for the Young Folk, Containing "A 

Midsummer Night's Dream," "As You Like It," ''Julius Caesar." 
8vo. Richly Illustrated, Old Gold Cloth, decorated, $2.50. 



** The many passages not necessary 
to dramatic unity, and above the com- 
prehension of the young, are omitted, 
and graceful prose narrative substi- 
tuted. Thus tne richest portions are 
retained, the whole woven into a con- 
nected form, and the original text, so 
far as it is used, is carefully edited, 
with explanatory foot-notes/'— ^^j/<7« 
Traveller, 



" For many years he has made a 
practical study of presenting Shake- 
speare's plays to popular audiences, 
and our readers well know the high es- 
timation in which we hold him as a 
Shakesperean scholar and reader."— 
Boston Home Journal. 

" The work is every way well done." 
— Wm. J. RoLFE, Shakespeare Editor 
of the Literary World, Boston, 



William S. Searle, M.D. 

A New Form of Nervous Disease. With an Essay 
on Erythroxylon Coca. 8vo. Cloth, 50 cents. 

William Osborne Stoddard. 

Abraham Lincoln. The True Story of a Great Life. 

By one of President Lincoln's Private Secretaries. 8vo. Illus- 
trated, Cloth, $2.25. 

" Written in terse, clear-cut English, 
and intensely readable from beginning 
to end — Mr. Stoddard's, m our opinion, 
approaches closely to the ideal biog- 
raphy and scarcely will be superseded 
by the efforts of any subsequent 



2M\h.ot.'''' -The Literary World, Boston. 
A graphic and entertaining biogra- 
phy, as rich in incident as any romance, 
and sparkling with wise wit and racy 
anecdote." — Harjrer^s Monthly, 



Albion W. Tourgee. 
An Appeal to C^^sar. Advocating National Aid to 

Education throughout the States, in proportion to illiteracy and to 
the local efforts to remedy it. Diagrams and Tables. Cloth, ^1.25. 

" Offers a series of vistas in different 
directions through the serried array of 
census figures that are simply astound- 
ing, while his keen, vigorous treatment 
of them compels and rewards SLiicn- 
XAony— Publisher's IVeekly, N. V. 



*-The author of 'A Fool's Errand' 
speaks with authorit>r upon the subject 
which, as he proved in that deservedly 
popular work, few men have studied 
niore carefully and on the v/hole so can- 
didly." — London Saturday Review. 



Ben C. Truman. 

The Field of Honor. A Plistory of Duelling and 
Famous Duels. The Judicial Duel ; The Private Duel through- 
out the Civilized World ; Descriptions of all the Noted Fatal 
Duels that have taken place in Europe and America. i2mo. 
Cloth, $2.00. 



'* Full of interest to the student, the 
soldier, the professional analyzer of 
passion and motive, and to that curious 
and omnivorous creature, the general 



reader. . . . One of those special- 
ties that necessarily find place in every 
WhtdiTy:'— Magazine cj A mcrican Hit- 
tory, N. Y. 



MISCELLANEOUS PUBLIC A TIONS, 



John C. Van Dyke. 

Principles of Art. Part I. — Art in History^ its 
causes, nature, development, and different stages of progression. 



Part II. — Art in I'heory^ its aims, motives, 
expression. i2mo. Vellum Cloth, $1.50. 

" Thickly set with points of interest, 
judiciously taken and intelligently sus- 
tained.*' — The Dial^ Chicago. 



and manner of 



"As a rapid, bright series of historical 
narrations the book is beyond compute 
a perfect treasury." — Graphic, N. V. 



Theodore S. Van Dyke. 

Southern California : Its Valleys,' Hills, and 
Streams ; Its Animals, Birds, and Fishes ; Its Gardens, Farms, 
and Climate. i2mo. Extra Cloth, beveled, $1.50. 



*' The result of twelve years' experi- 
ence in that noted region. The author 
has traversed it many times, riiie in 
hand." — Cincinnati Coin -Gazette, 

'•A keen and observant naturalist." 
— London (Eng.) Morning Post. 



"Without question the best book 
which has been written on the South- 
ern Counties of California. . . May 
be commended without any of the usu^ 
reservations." — San Francisco Chron- 
icle, 



The Still Hunter. A Practical Treatise on Deer- 
Stalking. i2mo. Extra Cloth, beveled, $2.00. 

" Altogether the best and most com- 
plete American book we have vet seen 
on any branch of field sports.''' — New 
I York Evening Post . 

The Rifle, Rod, and Gun in California. A Sport- 
ing Romance. i2mo. Extra Cloth, beveled, $1.50. 



'*The best, the very best work on 
deer hunting. — Spirit 0/ the Times^ 
N. Y. 



*' Crisp and readable throughout, 
and, at the same time, gives a full and 
truthful technical account of our South- 



ern California game, afoot, afloat or 
on the wing."— 6'rt« Francisco Alta 
California, 



Tullio di Suzzara Verdi, M.D. 

Maternity : A Popular Treatise. Eighth Edition, 

i2mo. Cloth, $2 00. 
Treating of the needs, dangers, and alleviations of the duties of 

maternity, and giving detailed instructions for the care and medical 

treatment of infants and children. 

*' A carefully written and ver^^ com- 1 
prehensive work, whose author has for 
years been well known in Washington | 



The Infant 
Baby's Journal. 

"Amusing as this booklet is, its object 
is not frivolous nor even literary; but 
the serious one of presenting the matter 
of the child's needs from a child's 
standpoint. . . . The good sense and 
long experience of the most observing 
of the profession is embodied in a new 



as an unusually able and successful 
practitioner. ... A safe friend and 
guide." — N. Y, Times. 

Philosopher : Stray Leaves from a 
Parchment Paper, 30 cts. ; Vellum Cloth, 50 cts. 

The Inde- 



form of quaint simplicity.'*'- 
pendent, N. Y. 

'" Every young mother should be fur- 
nished with a copy of this dainty bro- 
chure, which is as much a book of 
practical sense as it is ^jeii d'esprit."^"^ — 
Evening Bulletin^ Philadelphia. 



FORDS, HOWARD, 6- HULBERT. 



Dr. William Wagner. 
Epics and Romances of the Middle Ages. Adapted 

from the German. 500 pp., 8vo, Numerous spirited Illustrations. 

Cloth, gilt edges, $2.cx). 

*' Presenting familiarly the stirring 
legends of the Amelungs, the Dietrichs, 
the Niebelungenlied, Charlemagne and 
his knights, King Arthur and the Holy- 
Grail (Lohengrin, Parsifal. Tannhau- 
ser, etc.), Tristan and Isolde, and all 
the rich, romantic realm from which 
Richard Wagner drew his potent in- 
spiration. "—Z-zY^rrt^rj World, Boston. 



" Should supply the requirement of 
a marked interest in this day of an in- 
telligent appeciation of Wagner's colos- 
sal music-dramas ; and whether for the 
delight of the young, or the pleasure 
of the elders, it comes at a timely 
juncture." — New York Star. 



Maj( 



)or George E. Williams. 
Bullet and Shell. War as the Soldier saw it : 

Camp, March, and Picket ; Battlefield and Bivouac ; Prison and 
Hospital. Illustrated by Edwin Forbes, i vol., large 8vo. 
Illustrated. Cloth, $2 75. 



** Very correct history." — U. S. 
Grant. 

" I have no hesitation in recommend- 
ing your interesting volume.""^— W. T. 
Sherman. 

" I have read the book, and enjoyed 
it extremely, as giving such an admir- 



able picture of the interior of army 
life "—Geo. B. McClellan. 

"We know of no more stirring and 
soul-inspiring book. It is a story to 
delight the old soldier's heart."— AVw 
York Comtnercial Advertiser. 



James Grant Wilson. 

Bryant and His Friends. Some Reminiscences of 
the Knickerbocker Writers. Bryant, Paulding, Irving, Dana, 
Cooper, Halleck, and Drake ; together with Poe, N. P. Willis, 
Bayard Taylor, and others. Illustrated with Steel Portraits and 
Facsimile MSS. i2mo. Cloth beveled, gilt top, %i 00. 

"No man living- is probably so well 
fitted as the author of this volume to 
sketch the group of Knickerbocker 
writers "— A't"z(' York Tribune. 



'*I have read it with interest and 
pleasure."— George William Curtis. 

** A standard volume of literary \:C\S' 
Xjoxy.'"''— Boston Evening Traveller. 

'• Accept my thanks, as a Nev/ York 
author, for the work vou have accom- 
plished.'^— Edmund C. Stedman. 



A delightful addition to the stores 
of literary and personal history."— C/tx- 
cago Inter-Ocean. 



IRematn^cr ot Xar^e paper ie;^\X\<^\\ 

WHICH WAS STRICTLY LIMITED TO 195 NUMBERED COPIES 
Illustrated with 48 rare Steel Portrait Plates. 4 views of Poets* 

Homes (Steel) and 17 pages of Manuscript facsimile. 

Cloth, gilt top, uncut edges, $15.00. In Sheets for adding 

illustrative plates, at the same price. Full Mor., gilt, $25. 

\* Send for our Selected Catalogue of choice^ Amrfiran M'/'i-. 
FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, 

30 Lnffifjvtte Place, \cw York. 



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